Every Pairing Under The Sun
by Shadowed Mediocrity
Summary: Yoh's birthday. Tamao's present. Standards of beauty and the realization that they can change. [A series of requestfics. Just suggest me a pairing and I'll see.] [Anna x Tamao]
1. Drabble One: HaoxYoh

Every Pairing Under the Sun

**Author's Note**: I really should be updating _You're Mine_, but unfortunately I seem to be having a writer's block time. I got stuck halfway through the chapter, and due to the fact that I don't want to make my readers read complete crap, I'm taking a very brief break from it (about three days), and put my crap here instead.

What is here?

Here is about the least innovative idea you've ever heard: drabbles featuring every pairing under the sun. Both to bring out some creative ideas (creativity would be required in getting certain pairings together), and to break a block.

First pairing of the week… blame it on Garnet-chan, whom I've never met, talked to, or known in any other form other than 'have seen', but who is a brilliant writer, and whose Hao/Yoh fics I read shortly before deciding to do this. So yeah, Hao/Yoh for the first drabble.

..And yes, I realize that she's doing the same sort of idea for one of her fics. However, hers has dignity, and probably, sanity. So go read hers, and if you have spare time leftover, come back and read mine. (It's called Kirei na Kanjou.)

Feel free to put out a request for the next pairing, however. As long as it's not something like Kororo/Silva (look at the height difference!) I'll try.

..I may even try for Kororo/Silva. But you'd probably have to get me drunk first.

OC pairings are also requestable.. I guess…

**Disclaimer**: I don't own Shaman King, or else they wouldn't be being translated into English so bloody SLOWLY.

* * *

_Set in an AU universe, not dissimilar to You're Mine_

(**A/N:** Slight OOCness ahead. I'm tired and this was written in twenty-six minutes exactly.)

Drabble One: Orange Flavored

_Even when they had been young, the three of them had been together. Master Yohmei would come across them in the grounds occasionally, two dark heads bent together with a third golden-haired head. Oftentimes, they were quarreling, although one could hardly accuse the meek, easygoing Yoh of quarreling, and Hao was as easy to battle with as a glass wall._

_And when the blonde had stormed off, leaving a raging storm of bitter, cutting words to tear Yoh to pieces, he had always been the one by to gently mend them again, with clumsy fingers and a cupid's bow mouth that had not yet learned how to speak tactfully. He had been present on the earth a thousand years or more, but it was a new thing to him to speak truths that would not hurt and burn his mark into another's mind. It was a new thing to him to speak to a part of him that should have known all that he had to say._

_And yet all the memories had been resolved contentedly. Anna had always returned to them, placid with the iron-cold calm that would become her trademark as they aged together. Yoh would always be roused from his dream of raucous tears. And Hao would always be in the background again, lips twisted into a fine mockery of adult amusement as he watched them together, fitting in the manner of puzzle-pieces that had never known a day apart._

_He was content in being the mender; he, who had broken so many hearts and dreams on his way to the present. He was content in waiting for Yoh to grow in strength, for Yoh to gradually find his way to the path that would lead him to his brother._

_But mending cannot forever satisfy those who have learned to break…_

---

Anna had not asked for him at breakfast, but had sat in a stony silence, surrounded by brooding thoughts of her own that Hao was not interested enough to break through. That had been his first clue that not all was well.

But even if she had been tranquil with arrogant ease, he would have suspected something – Yoh was his other half, and the person that he knew best of all. Every ion of his routine had been ingrained with such precision into the long-haired shaman's mind that he could no longer recall a time when things had been anything but so. The visions of a thousand years past had not faded from his mind – he was still as sharply ambitious than ever. But ask him to recall his companions from a thousand years past, and their countenances were blurred with the incomprehensibility of faded memory.

He had no room in his mind for their presence now. They were dead, and had been for too long, while Yoh was delightedly, vibrantly alive.

And to reach that luminescent presence, he had only to reach out…

---

A gentle brush of the shoulder drew the other's attention. Dark eyes that were rimmed with crimson sorrow, but were without the sullen resentment of humans, stared up at him guilelessly, with a swoop of helplessness that Hao had never learned to acquire. "I'm fine." Yoh said immediately, and tried to smile, though his lips were too parched for that stretch, and cracked to reveal tiny fissures of blood.

"Hai." His brother agreed blandly. "If by fine you mean completely distraught. What's happened this time?" But even as he spoke, he was stepping back, hands immediately folding behind his back in a gesture of expectancy. He had never been the kind to support the weak; no matter how many advantages the feeble acquired, if others could match it, they would become weak again. And though Yoh was his brother, the half that had been severed from him at birth, he would do no less than this.

Only the dark-haired shaman himself felt the pressure as four half-moon nails sliced into his palm in an attempt to contain himself, to force himself not to help as Yoh struggled slowly to his feet, devoid of tears, now; hollowed.

"Nothing's happened." The features that he knew as well as his own bore a tired expression, a weariness that was wholly unlike the buoyant Yoh that the world had grown to love. "Nothing at all. Anna's just a little more disappointed than usual… and… and she…" The breath he drew into his lungs was shuddering, tentative. Though Hao was impatient for the knowledge that haunted his twin's eyes, nevertheless, he was more tactful now than ever he had been when he was young, and he was silent.

At last, Yoh broke the silence again, with a statement that astonished the other shaman.

"They're considering switching her engagement with me to you instead."

"Hai?" He forced himself to say casually, and felt an amused smile lilt up to his lips automatically. "That's foolish of them. How do they know that I even…"

"Even what?"

The returned smile was wicked with a slow, honeyed malice. "That I even swing that way?"

A momentary burst of confusion overcame Yoh's gradually recovering composure before he comprehended the metaphor and smiled slightly, weakly. "Found someone already, have you?"

"Found someone?" The other was momentarily startled before recovering with abrupt composure. "You could say that…"

A sigh escaped the slightly younger brunet's lips as he glanced with forced blitheness towards his brother. "That's good. At least one of us's happy." An involuntary jerk brought him to glance at the steps, and inadvertently, he winced.

None of his actions, however, escaped Hao's eyes – and the astute mind behind the dark hair comprehended immediately, bitterly. "You… love her?"

"Who wouldn't?" The dark-haired boy replied softly, though his eyes never left the stairs. And his brother was put in mind of a puppy in the rain, waiting while growing soaked to the bone, waiting in the middle of an intersection simply because his master had paused there and had told him to "stay". He would wait forever, if necessary, always in the rain, chilled to the bone; always waiting…

Brusquely, he rose, moving to pull out the contents of the drawers until he found the tiny metal container necessary to his present purpose. "I wouldn't, for one. I'm not so much of a fool as to let Anna have something as delicate as my heart. She'd tear it apart just to see how and if it worked." The words were spoken amusedly, but they were meant with a wholehearted fervor that seemed unlikely in one as composed as he.

"..It sounds silly when I think about it…" Yoh admitted, offering a faint smile to the one who had always been his caretaker. "But I wouldn't mind so much if she were the one doing the tearing."

The hand that gripped the metal container convulsed for a moment, contracting about the tiny rounded thing in his palm and subtly squashing it. "I suppose so." He forced himself to say lightly. "If I were in love.. it wouldn't matter how many times I was torn, so long as, if they were torn, I could mend the pieces again." As Yoh flashed him an inquiring look, his smile became abruptly wicked. "What a pity that I'm not; many people love romantics." Fumbling with the lid from the tiny container, he pulled it off, revealing a scented chapstick-like concoction within. "Hold still." He directed the other boy, who did so obediently. A deft finger wiped the necessary amount from the unmarred surface before touching it to his twin's lips gently.

He could sense the stilled pressure within the other brunet's body as his breathing slowed, growing quite still in order to ease Hao's task. And even this lightest of burdens was sufficient to content him with the world again…

"There." He said in satisfaction as he completed his task. "I'm not sure if this is flavored too or not. I think I asked for orange, but the container doesn't say."

"It doesn't matter." Yoh responded with a smile, eyes curving into closed semi-circles of contentment. "Thank yo—mmph!" For unexpectedly, his lips were sealed… with the touch of another's.

Oddly, Hao's lips fitted easily over his own, as though they were the two puzzle-pieces that had always been apart but had been newly discovered to fit together… Dizzyingly, he thought he could see the flash of colors that had not yet been invented on the inside of his eyelids, glowing brilliant, variegated hues that made him lightheaded with confusion.

Distantly, he was aware that the other boy's lips had left his own, and that Hao was gazing at him with something akin to satisfaction.

"Definitely orange-flavored." The faintly older shaman confirmed with an iniquitous grin as his brother's eyes refocused upon the real world. "Get better soon, Yoh." With a brotherly pat on the younger boy's head, he strode out of the room.

Leaving, admittedly, a rather confused Yoh behind. But then again, Yoh had always been confused.

* * *

**Author's Note**: About 15x too long for a drabble.. x.x; But oh well. Review? Or at least tell me what pairing should be up next? 


	2. Drabble Two: HaoxFangirl

Every Pairing Under the Sun

**Author's Note:** I was _going_ to write a Hao/HoroHoro fanfic next as a particular challenge to myself. But this fic-drabble (fribble!) caught my attention, and I just couldn't HELP laughing out loud at the sheer ridiculousness of the idea. Hope everybody loves this as much as I did… and so far the pairings are going to be fribbled in this order: HaoxHoroHoro, FaustxManta, YohxOC, HaoxAnna, YohxTamao. With bouts in between, perhaps, as I go off on random tangents for the ignored minor characters. xP

Two more days until my break with _You're Mine_ is over; I'll have the chapter up by that evening, I'd hope.

**Disclaimer**: Be glad I don't own Shaman King, or else the following scene might actually have been enacted in the series as, you know, an aftermath thing.

(Definite OOCness ahead. However, I hope that it's funny, so since you've been warned… walk on. This chapter is rated PG-13 for suggestive themes, etc, etc. Bah.)

* * *

Drabble Two: And the Moral of the Story Is…

The dark-haired shaman formerly known as Shaman King Hao (though he'd never actually _grasped_ the title, he was certain that it was just a formality) sighed irritably.

The day in itself was a fine thing, all blue skies with nary a cloud in sight. Blue skies as blue as—

Damn. He'd started thinking about _them_ again. Them, their big eyes, and big—

He really needed to get over this.

With a swift sigh as inflammable in nature as anything that he had ever burnt to a crisp with the Spirit of Fire, he rose to his feet, absentmindedly kicking away the dust from the ground away from his lego-like boots. What had possessed him to get them anyway? They were big, lumpy, and most probably terrible for moving in. But then again, a thousand years ago he'd been wearing a dress and a pointy hat – which was definitely _not_ requisite monk wear. So he most probably should stop going down this train of thought right now before he began to wonder how many innkeepers had let him stay at their residences because they thought that he was g—

Although it would have been a lot easier to get rid of _them_ if he'd been gay.

Casting a vaguely hunted look over his shoulder, his eyes widened minutely to see that his companions had vanished. Though he could hardly be terribly surprised; half of them would be, he knew, in their zeal to please him, hunting _them_ down. The others would have run away in fear. And he could hardly blame them; _they_ were a formidable force indeed.

A hand detached itself from his lump of robes, rising gently into the air to begin the summoning of the Spirit of Fire…

Before he was tackled by a moving blur that appeared to be screeching quite loudly in an unintelligible language quite unknown to him.

When he had recovered from the sudden attack, the brunet was quite miffed to discover two things:

1) There appeared to be some blonde lump sitting atop his stomach, so light that she hardly constricted his breathing. _She_, he managed to discern, through her high-pitched squealings, was the cause of the noise.

2) She'd gotten his robe all dusty. His _favorite_ robe, too – not that anyone could distinguish the difference between them. But this was _medium-lightest-dark_ beige, whereas the others varied between _dark-light-medium_ beige, and _light-light-slightly-off-white-although-not-really-white-because-white-was-a-symbol-of-good-and-if-he-was-anything-it-was-not-good_ beige.

Only after lamenting silently to himself for five minutes regarding the state of his now bedraggled wardrobe did he return his attention to the girl. She did not, in the midst of her squealings, appear to have paused for breath, though her speech had slowed to human comprehensibility now. The shaman was struck by a Faust-like urge to tear her ribcage open and wonder at the size of her lungs, though he had managed, at last, to identify the language she spoke.

A cutting, barbaric sort of tongue, not at all like the flowing Japanese to which he was accustomed. What was it called again? English? American? British? He couldn't recall, and felt no need to. Inferior bunch of badly-bred morons, anyway. Who could recall the last time anybody who couldn't speak Japanese had attained the title of Shaman King?

…

Ex_actly_.

"OmigodomigodZekezekeyouaresosexydidImentionthatandbesideswhichwhenyoutakeoffyourrobeitissoHOT!" The blur squealed.

He blinked.

Ah. So she was one of _them_, then.

"If it would suit you." He said with his usual cruel amusement, masking all sentiments that were less than kind, "would you _please_ get off of me? Before I burn you off?"

She blinked back at him in total confusion. "Your voice…" She said distantly. "It's…"

"Yes, I do realize it's the sexiest thing you've ever heard, but—"

"You don't speak _Japanese_, Zeke." She swatted at him lightly, impeding his breathing for no other reason than the fact that she had a _very heavy hand_. "Speak English in that sexy voice you used on TV!"

Zeke.

O Great Spirit, if only that idiotic television show had bothered to secure a translation of the show from a _decent channel!_

"My name," he said, remembering to use English this time, however awkwardly the words flowed from his tongue, "is _not_ Zeke. It is Asakura Hao, and you would do well to remember it."

"Omigod." She was staring at him again, but in a distinctly misty fashion that made him want to edge away.

Or, for preference, burn her to a crisp. But he'd promised The Almighty Writers of the Script And Mankin Canon that if he was to do any burning, it would be on-stage; anywhere else, said idiot would be given six chances. Six, the devil's number.

"You must have _amnesia!_" She crowed contentedly, staring at him in apparent delight. "I've read about circum—affa—_things_ like this!" Obviously the word 'circumstances' was beyond her vocabulary. "I'll nurse you back to health, and then you'll fall in love with me, and then we'll get married and live happily ever after! Oh _Zeke_…" She hugged his leg in a way that, unless he was willing to be more explicit, could only be termed a 'glomp'. "What a lucky, lucky boy you are!"

"_Baka_." Seething, in a moment he had knocked her over. Rising to his feet through the fuel of sheer rage, he glowered down at her imposingly. "I am _not_ Zeke." He said curtly, biting his lip in order to refrain from shouting out a more explicit set of threats. "I am Asakura Hao, and if you've done quite enough to irritate me for the day, I advise you to go now." A tiny frown nestled between his brows as he thought. "How the hell did you get into our world anyway?"

"Mmm…" She said, in what she most probably thought a sensual voice. "You're so _sexy_ when you're angry…" Pausing a moment, she giggled. "And I can see up your robes down here!"

But the shaman was too occupied in counting to pay much attention to her words.

"One, sitting on my stomach…" He murmured under his breath. "Two, getting my robe dusty… three, shouting in that irritating high pitched voice, four, calling me by the wrong name, five, sexual harassment and saying the word 'sexy' too much… Six…" He mused for a moment, rolling several contemplations over his tongue before smirking.

"Six for existing at all."

And with that, the unlucky fangirl was reduced to ashes.

And since all fairy tales come with morals, here's this one: If you're going to turn a certain Mankin character into your bishonen, worship him from afar. Worshipping him up-close will never work out unless you're non-flammable.

And in case that moral doesn't work out, a second one:

Run for your life, fanfiction authors. Asakura Hao is coming.

* * *

**Author's Note**: Yeah, you probably all saw that coming a mile away… ;) Ah well. Sorry, fangirls.

I know, it's a weird fic, but it's fifteen minutes long in the writing, and it's a pairing of sorts. Where else was I supposed to put it?

Read and review. You know what the next chapter is, unless you didn't read the note at the top…

Brief review replies:

**Asn water:** HaoxAnna is easy, which's why I'm saving it for last. Have you read the manga? I think Volume thirteen (?) promotes HaoxAnna in a BIG way. It's almost cute. n.n

**Sakuuya:** Hmm… FaustxManta is a bit harder, but not quite as hard, I think, as HaoxHoro, which's why it comes a bit later in the chapter.

**soccer-cutie67:** Well, I came close this chapter; HaoxOC. –grin- Sort of. Your two wishes are coming pretty close to last… basically because they're vaguely easy. YohxOC could be hard, though, depending.

**Inulover4eva:** Your wish hath been granted; HaoxFangirl… which I assume you are. –grin-

**Azalee:** HaoxHoro's coming up the next chapter; I have it half-done anyway, as I started yesterday.

**SquirrelFraulein: **Sankyuu!

**Anna-Jay:** There's not really anything to finish.. After I'm done with _You're Mine_ if it still intrigues me I may pick it up again, but I doubt it…


	3. Drabble Three: HaoxHoroHoro

Every Pairing Under the Sun

**Author's Note: **Yeah, this is going to update pretty quickly. Quicker than _You're Mine_, at least. Why? Because this is basically my 'training ground'. Some concepts here you may see more fleshed out in YM. Some concepts are just going to stay half-baked ideas.

For the people who give me the full-fledged ideas with their suggestions and reviews, I thank you ahead of time. :)

I was really torn between HaoxHoro and FaustxManta for this chapter, because both are _really_ tough to flesh out and construct without taking everyone utterly out of context and etc. However, I finally settled on Hao/Horo because it's more difficult. Faust/Manta will probably be upcoming, because that's pretty difficult too. Hao/Anna is on my list, but rather more behind, because it's easier for me. It will be coming about Drabble 4 or 5 if I don't get more difficult ones. :flashes a grin:

(Order I'm going in: Faust/Manta, AnnaxLyserg (something even harder than HaoxHoro! O.O), YohxRen for the madness, YohxOC (not a fangirl, but an actual OC), RenxAnna, YohxHoro, MarcoxLyserg, HaoxAnna, YohxTamao. Eight lined up already… whee…)

Note: Following drabble (or fribble, a fic-drabble, because I just can't write short things) contains vague spoilers for Team The Ren's first Shaman Fight in the Patch Village. If you don't care for that sort of thing, move along with you.

Edit: I was going to write this a certain way, and then I read _Bare_, by Memphis Lupine. I don't particularly care if it had flaws (I didn't see any), to me it was perfect. What I read of it, what I saw of it, was beautiful.

This fic, despite being wholly different in themes and characters involved, is based on that one-shot, and despite the fact that said Lupine may never see this, I thank her for writing it. Oi. You people. Go read it and fill your plebian minds with fleeting inspiration.

Warning: Drabble Three features a veryOOC!Depressedbutindenial!HoroHoro and a SlightlyOOC!Hao. Thank you and enjoy.

**Disclaimer: **I own Shaman King about as much as I own you. That means that the day I purchase Shaman King, you all shall become my slaves and I shall take over the WORLD!

..Ahem.

* * *

_(What might have been, but was not, and thank the Great Spirits for that.)_

Drabble Three: Between Fire and Ice

They were celebrating.

It was reasonable, of course, that they should celebrate their first victory in the tournament; the first, Ren had claimed, of many.

It was reasonable that Ren should have sent Chocolove out to battle against the Boz and the guy who had the accent that distorted his words and enrichened them. Everything was so damn reasonable that he wanted to hurt it, hurt _them_, simply for the pure glorious illogic of it.

Now he breathed in the ingrained chill of night, twisting slightly so that the breeze brushed every inch of him and daubed him with the early cold of the evening. His people had lived side by side with the low temperature, grasping it and using it with an ease that came to them naturally, never understanding the illogic that lay beneath it and came easily to him now as his bitterness was blustered away.

Now he grinned, faintly and with boyish ferality as he bounded from the ledge to the streets, taking to the pathways with a furious, blinded speed. The wind roared its fury in his ears, striking him, pushing him back, but still he pressed on determinedly, hearing not its fury, but the echo of his heartbeat through his ears.

The streets were deserted at this time of night. No one to see the best beloved of the Ainu, the grace of Nature that might save them all, running as though he had nowhere to go.

-

Before he knew it (and did he know it, even now?), he was on the plateau, nameless, one of the many that seemed everywhere and nowhere at once in the Patch Village. Breathless, feeling exhaustion winding about his bones, he collapsed into the dust with careless gracelessness. He had always been gawky, and didn't care any longer when people noted that lack in him. He had more than enough to make up for it, and when he was Shaman King there would be no one to speak against him.

An elbow trailed listlessly through the dust, buttressing a profile of honest lines as blunted and sharp as hail. His eyes stared blankly at the moon, but if he saw it, that tiny glimpse was more than he saw anything else. If he saw the light, it was only because he was blinded to the darkness and the growing figure garbed in a snapping white cloak that moved through it as though he were part of it.

"The night is beautiful, isn't it?"

_breaking up the darkness_

_the silence_

_the shadows watching them disintegrate into jagged pieces sharp enough to cut_

"Yoh?" Even as he said the name, he knew that it was wrong – the bright, lighter sensuality to this voice was not that of the boy who had been his first opponent. He was not certain that he knew this voice at all. But…

_ages and ages past must have known bright flashing like a dagger knife can cut_

_caressingly_

_with its rounded edge and_

_leave wisps of blood in its path_

Delighted silver laughter slipped through the air, throaty, a stranger's tones in a familiar, beautiful voice. "Wrong!" The shaman said amusedly, and suddenly he was on the boulder a few feet away. "Will you guess again?"

Though the face was gilded by moonlight and _was_ Yoh in all the petty physical ways that mattered, he knew that it could not be. Always brash, never subtle, he replied instead, "What are you doing here, Hiei?"

The other winced, but only faintly, so that the gesture appeared illusory and Horohoro wondered if he had seen it at all. "_Hao_," He said, a little more sharply than usual. "It's one character; not that difficult to remember."

"Not that difficult for people who care what it is. Go away." All traces of even the faint joy in victory had left him, and now he found himself coldly annoyed, distant from his emotions in a way that he had never been. It would have been frightening for him if he had cared for it, but he did not.

A faint, catlike smile, almost invisible in the darkness, though he saw it anyway. "I will, if you want to be alone."

_I do_. He said – or meant to. But the words took up residence in his throat and would not leave, lingering long after they should have been dead weight in the air.

"I thought so." Hao said, and a hand scraped lightly against the rocky surface to his side. "Come," he said. "Sit." And in the midnight blindness, the blue-haired boy did not think to disobey.

He sat and they were silent a moment, and though he was not one of the fools that mistook silence for peace, there was the faint edge of enjoyment to the moment that soothed his pain away. The other boy was so quiet as to be not there at all, and if he was not there, then there was nothing to complain of.

But eventually all mortals speak. And Hao was nothing if not that.

"Where are your friends?" Though the question was subtle, the words beneath were not; to Horohoro they blazed as clearly as daylight, etching like fire into his mind as they coursed through his veins. The other shaman did not say _where are your friends_ so much as _where is Yoh what is he doing why is he not getting any better_?

"Shut up." He said instead, substituting in place of a less polite – and possibly anatomically impossible – suggestion. He closed his eyes, wishing that the other boy would quiet again and let him think, think until he finally came up with a thought.

A peal of laughter rang through the night. It sounded against his skin, vibrating in a manner that was not entirely unpleasant. "You remind me of someone, Ainu." The rich voice said silkily, indulgently. "And to think I had thought you weak…"

He shrugged again and tried not to let that suggestion eat away at his thoughts and poison them, though they did all the same. "Everyone thinks so." He said. "It does not matter."

"To them?" He could hear laughter again, strained and barely contained, in the other boy's voice. "Or to you?"

"Either!" The temper he had kept barely under control was fraying again, and with it, the anger that he kept determinedly hidden deepened. "Why can't you listen when I tell you that _it doesn't matter!_"

"Who doesn't it matter to?"

"No one! Anyone!"

Lips curved into a smile – lips so familiar that he could have sworn they were his own. "But there you're wrong." The shaman murmured, and smiled. "It matters to me."

Anger roiled briefly before subsiding again. "Trying to annoy me?"

"I would say succeeding more than trying."

"Well," said the Ainu, "go try somewhere else. I'm not up to these games. Nor do I want to be."

"Don't like these games?" Hao asked, with a voice like silk and raw fur still dense with sweat from the spirit that had only briefly departed. "Then shall we try something else?"

The blue-haired boy glanced up sharply, and in his gaze was the notation of faint alarm, that he had begun to understand the hypnotic spell of the other shaman and was only beginning to struggle to break free from it. But already it was too late – the other boy's lips met his own in a collision too gentle to contrast the sudden upheaval of his thoughts.

There had been no girls at home, in the village where he dwelt, that had caught his interest. Idly, occasionally he had wondered what they must be like, those soft buxom curves with which they flirted and flounced about. But that was all that they had been – idle wonderings that had never waked fire behind them.

_This_ had fire – a roaring flame into which he fell and drowned and was seared a thousand times over before fading into ashes that would flutter away upon the wind.

Raising his head blearily, he stared into eyes that were dark and unsympathetic, hooded with amusement at his plight.

"What was _that_ about?" He said, a little wonderingly, fighting the urge to trace the curves of the shaman's cheek even as he battled against a steely calmness to summon anger – or at least a confused indignation – into his demeanor. There was no tenderness there… but it had been his first kiss and he was still a little dizzily wistful at the memory of it, the property that was now only fleeting reminiscence.

Hao merely shrugged, smiling lithely, mildly. "Did you enjoy it?" He asked in stead of that response, but knew even as the words left his lips that there would be no reply.

He stood stock still for a moment, still more awkward than usual. And before his senses could return to him, he turned to run, stumbling slightly in the dark as he darted away, fleeting like the first snowflake of a coming storm.

And as the Ainu scrambled from the plateau, the fire shaman allowed himself a faint smile. Grasping a fold of his clothing and lifting it to his lips, he blotted the kiss away with a light, ingrained disgust.

-

The next night, when the moon had thinned slightly, Hao turned and glanced into the darkness. Though there was nothing to be seen, a faint smile traced its way upon his lips, stumbling like a blind man in a bramble maze.

"I did think that you might come."

"Were you certain?"

"Relatively."

And there were no more words to be spoken; only a physical need that had been honed to a dagger-sharpness that was, as the night wore on, alleviated.

-

"Baka Ainu!"

The exclamation was lost before ever it touched his mind, though it passed through his ears cuttingly enough so that he turned to glance at the speaker. A deadened gaze surveyed the irate Chinese shaman who stood in the doorway, then glanced past him as though he had not seen him there. And it was that which irritated Ren further.

"The whole damned Patch is talking about it!" He roared, striding from the midst of the doorway impatiently, bearing down upon the blue-haired boy with the strength that he had once thought his father to encompass. "How Hao is seducing away the shaman to his cause – quite literally! And that he's started the whole thing with _you_. Two weeks ago." Irritation firmed his hands and directed their path as he clenched them into rounded, childish fists. "Tell me if it's true! I know you've been odd for the past two weeks, but it can't be that." He shook that away as though wanting to disbelieve in it even as he recognized it as the only possibility.

Angrily he shook the unresponsive shaman's shoulders, as though agitating him would stir his soul again. "Tell me!" He said again.

And from the impassive depths of Horohoro's eyes, a response formed.

"Are you jealous?" His voice was dulled steel, unpolished but still sharp enough to cut.

Molten gold was sliced into two tiny slits as the Chinese shaman glared at him impotently, though the pupils had shrunken, taken aback. "Jealous of what?" He speared the Ainu boy with three words, keeping him still and present to listen when he was unwilling. A pause. "He's mad, crazy, thick-headed... mad."

"He's not."

"He's mad and you know it. You have only to look into his eyes to see that he's not all there. He's _obsessed_—" An arrogance made hot by his irritation slid from his words as he said this, as though this obsession were more than the mere ambition that he himself harbored, "_Obsessed_ with the idea of becoming Shaman King. He'll kill for it; strike down whoever's in his path."

"_You_ killed." Horohoro said coldly with a voice like the winters through which his people had endured. He turned away, but over his shoulder, he said, "For your entry into the Shaman contest, _you_ killed, Ren, and have you ever regretted that? Have you ever mourned properly for the officiant you murdered?"

He did not look back to see the other shaman stiffen, breath caught up and lost in his thoughts. Nor would he know that when he slammed the door, the motion was enough to stir a single drop of liquid salt and splash it onto the ground.

-

"They don't like you."

"None of your friends do; not even the precious, amiable Yoh does. And have you ever thought that they might have their reasons?"

A careless shrug; boyish fingers raked indifferently through the soft blue of his hair. "Does it matter?" He countered.

A gaze made cruelly apathetic by too many centuries of life studied him momentarily. "To you I suppose it doesn't." The brunet said, so softly that the wind whipped it away almost before the Ainu had time enough to hear it.

"Damn straight." He was exultant again, smirking, smiling casually, though only Hao could see how fragile the façade was, how only one word in the right (or was it wrong?) pace would be sufficient to crumble it. Riding the high, before it faded and he was allowed to fall, he leaned over and skimmed light kisses across the other boy's jawline, experience he learned in only a few weeks that passed like days.

Lips harsh and dry, he brushed them carelessly, coarsely over the other boy's skin before encountering lips as familiar to him as his own – perhaps even more so.

Surprisingly, it was Hao who held back, desisting coolly, with casual manipulation. Thumbs pressing lightly into the hollows where his collarbones and the demesnes of his shoulders clashed, he held the blue-haired boy away, studying him with amusement and a distant smile.

"Tell me." He whispered, and his breath was so close that the Ainu felt it sweep his skin, searing like wielded flames.

_Tell you what_? He wanted to ask, but knew better than to feign ignorance. Pressing all his weight against the immovable barrier, he murmured against it – _so close and yet so distant_ – "_I want you_." Perhaps only Hao was the one to see how he hung his head briefly, how the strongly held gaze allowed the lashes to flutter and fall like closed gates – gates that had been broken and conquered.

Loosing his grip upon the other boy gradually, he allowed their lips to touch again, a brief, chaste embrace that did not suit him as passion did, though he wore it with the same grace as he did everything else. It lasted only a moment, through no fault of HoroHoro's.

When that moment had gone, he broke away again.

And smiled.

His smile was the cruel twist of a blade, where the light was bent and warped into shapes it had not intended. It said much about the beauty of broken things, and of the tiny shard of Horohoro that the fire shaman wore like a jewel, glinting and precious and immovable from his possession. And when Yoh called his companions together again to form the intricate design that friendship had bound them to, the blue-haired boy would not be among them.

Hands twirling intricately to wind about them the voluminous beige of his cloak, he pivoted upon one foot and left the clearing without further notice. A whisper escaped him, faint as the streaks of dawn that crossed the skies.

"_And whoever said I wanted _you_?"_

---

Author's Note: I even copied Memphis Lupine's way of separating her sections… -.-; Ah well, it suited the simplicity; read and review?

**soccer-cutie67**: If he weren't so evil, he'd be less attractive. :P So yeah. It evens out.

**Monon:** MarcoxLyserg.. a slightly harder one, though not _too_ hard. Thanks for the suggestion. :)

**Unbreakable Itako:** I have ideas for it already. Pity Lyserg ahead of time; he's probably going to need it if the drabble I have in mind comes out right…

**Frances Gray:** Faust/Manta coming right up.

**Kawaii Koneko92:** I'm not too fond of Hao/OC myself, considering the fact that I've only seen two fanfictions on it so far and both of them have been horrible, mind-boggling Mary-Sues. I don't mind Mary-Sues as a generality if they're well written, but these two were not.

**Inulover4eva:** No it wasn't you… I didn't think you were that much of an airhead. ;)

**asn water:** RenxAnna it is; I've always wondered slightly about it ever since I saw the end of episode 62. And now I have the opportunity.. although not necessarily an idea yet.

**Garnet-chan:** Adore them. :P You have a brilliant simplicity that's very appealing. And yes, I've got those two in line to be written sometime during the next month or so…

Aww, but fribble is so much more fun to say! :(


	4. Drabble Four: FaustxManta & Others

Every Pairing Under the Sun

**Author's Note:** I seem to have lost my pairings list, so I don't have an organized one to follow right now. No worries, though, I'll find it. Eventually.

Sorry for not updating for so long! This one's a true drabble of sorts, and followed by three extra drabbles to make up for my lateness.

Random note: I drew a picture of Hao. When I saved it, it was exactly 666 KB. –snickers because she finds this amusing-

**Disclaimer**: Be glad I don't own Shaman King, because… Wait. Nevermind. Be _sad_ I don't own Shaman King. That'll make two of us. :D

* * *

Drabble Four: Obsession

Overlarge head bent over a paper too small for his eyes, too small for his world, he smiled, content after a fashion. It wasn't as good as being with Yoh (and it never was – one of the few illogical things that fit into his mind as perfectly as piece to puzzle-piece) but he liked it in its own way, in its own place. He had thought, at first, that he would not be controlled – that it would wreak havoc upon his life and he would be lost in the drowning seas that was the shaman boy, but then Yoh had changed and become, not part of his life, but his life in its entirety.

It made things so much simpler to know that it was only that he couldn't breathe without Yoh than anything like the fact that he couldn't live without him. (Genius, brilliant Manta knew that there was technology to push air in and out of your lungs without effort; and so he could live without breathing of his own accord.)

But then he felt the thumping, the light pulsing of a skittering heartbeat.

He frowned.

-

_Hands._

_Reaching so far inside of him that it reached a new plateau of pain, hands that were both dexterous-deft and clumsy, too, like a boy with his first kiss, trying to be gentle and adept but too clumsy to know that the only thing that hurt was his utter gracelessness, beautiful but aching, and he ached all over now from screaming so much, from staring into purple that went on for eons and an infinity that would not die…_

_He lay momentarily upon the grassy knoll, injured and spent of all his energy. Past his vision, he thought he could see a Yoh-blur shouting angrily at a Mad-Doctor-blur, but then his hearing went and he could no longer dream of that, either._

_The doctor, he thought, had whispered something to him, or perhaps to the beautiful blonde skeleton to his side; lovingly, tenderly._

"_It won't be long now."_

_He was the first person to have touched Manta, not with careless friendship, nor with the cavalier scorn and admiration that was available to him everywhere he went, nor with the cold assessing ambition that his father expected of him, but with intensity strong enough to burn him, warm him until even the nerves with which he feels have been scorched away._

-

The present Manta shuddered a little, though not with revulsion, at the memory of those hands on him. The pain had been a terrible thing, and so had the fact that his internals were spilling into the external, but there had been an odd gentleness in the surgery.

Almost a kindness that had nothing to do with scorn, ambition, or friendship.

He shuddered again, though for different reasons now. _I'm not obsessed. I don't need love._ He told himself irritably, and went back to writing his essay, only to discover that he had filled sixty-six lines with a single name.

_Faust_.

* * *

**Author's Note:** This one was a real drabble. (500 words – better than my usual 2000.) I've finally written something short and coherent! Hurrah for me!

..Okay, maybe not coherent. But I thought that this was pretty decent, considering.

Next up is Anna and Lyserg, as I've already written it and, despite its 2000-word length, am fairly proud of the dialogue, though not of the characterizations. In the meantime, here's a true drabble – 300 words and present tense, which I now appear to be addicted to. Figure out the pairing yourself.

* * *

_Extra_: (300-word drabble)

"Here."

She offers it to him, slightly beyond the reach of her tiny fingertips, eyes tentative and waiting. He holds it momentarily, grasping it, opening it, shuffling aside the tissue coverings to reveal the cheap things beneath.

They are mortal things; he sees that without looking, knows it without thinking. But he grasps it anyway, confident to the marrows of his bones.

He has no idea from where she has come, and doesn't care. He does not ask questions, and never has.

"I-I thought you might like something. For your birthday." She says shyly, quietly. He looks to her with a smile and eyes like scattered ashes. And in a moment, the package becomes that as well.

He drops the remainder to the floor, careful, calm, cold. She does not say a word more.

There is silence.

"Why?" He asks at last. The dark, shadowed smile is gone, replaced by the first hint of confusion. "I don't even know you."

She shrugs helplessly, and reminds him of his brother very much in that moment. "Because I do not know any better." She replies.

"Try again."

"Because…" She pauses a moment, savoring the word, helpless and helpful at once. "Because you've never had a birthday present before, and I wanted you to have one."

She smiles timidly once, a widely adoring grin, and it is that smile that he sees, burning behind his eyes, as he incinerates her too.

He shakes away the flecks of cinders as he dips a gloved hand in, brings the burnt parcel to the surface. A CD.

In time, some dark evening when the skies are clear, Yoh will find his headphones missing. And in some distant region, a wrathful mind will be soothed to sleep by the sharp tunes of a rock 'n' roll lullaby.

* * *

_Extra Numbah Two: (Ten-minute drabble; Tamao ficlet.)_

Anna has come home.

Tamao knows this detachedly, with a strange emptiness where her heart usually pounds. Anna has come home (Izumo; _her_ home, never Anna's, but the itako usurps a place that might have been hers all the same) for the winter holiday, and will not be budged to leave, probably, until Yoh has given up.

-

She sees him bruised and battered sometimes, thrown against the wall like a discarded doll. These things are not uncommon when Anna is home.

She tries, a little, to alleviate it. Tugging timidly at Master Yohmei's sleeve, a quiet whisper escaping her throat before she can hastily pull it back.

The Master only laughs. To him there needs be only a trick of the shadows, and little Tamao will jump and squeak. To him, Tamao is squeaking at shadows again - and there is nothing to fear in shadows.

He smiles and pats her head and says the words that deepens her fears, her thoughts, her nightmares.

"Anna loves Yoh."  
_  
No._ She wants to say. _Anna hates Yoh. There is no such cruelty in love._

But her throat is blocked, a prison. The words do not escape into the world today.

-

Long after the dark dances throughout the world, she creeps out from beneath the snuggling warmth of her futon, shivering a little in her thin shift, this tiny six-year-old girl with the snaggletoothed smile and the soothing, cooling bruise-paste clasped tightly between her delicate palms.

Starlight fills his room.

For a moment, she shivers, pulls back. But then, remembering what she endeavors, she goes forth again, straightbacked but wary.

He is beautiful under moonlight; more beautiful than in daytime, when the harshness of the sun bleaches the fine daintiness of his bones and ravages their color until there seems none at all. And he is more beautiful still under the summer stars.

She wishes it were summer; winter never fails to bring him bruises. There is one under his cheek now, tribute to a bumbling fall in the midst of his training. (Anna hates it when he stumbles, and deals him reminders in stinging blows that fade from the flesh sooner than they do from memory.)

He sighs in his sleep and she whirls, eyes darting frantically for a place to duck and cover. But only his fingers rise; a casual, tender brush against the bruises before he delves into slumber again.

Twelve minutes later, she is still flattened against his door, a child's trembling shadow that is too afraid to creep into and past the corridor.

Eventually, before the sun rises, she goes away, bruise-paste unopened, still clutched tightly in a child's fist.

She remembers what the Master said: _Anna loves Yoh._

But, she thinks, it does not matter if Anna loves Yoh. Not anymore.

For Yoh_ loves Anna_.

* * *

_Extra Numbah Three: (Drabble: If Hao knew about fangirls and was summoned to our world, bound for the duration of a lifetime to one of them.)_

She loves the seeing of him, the knowledge that he is there, irredeemable, unchangeable, eternal. She loves his smiles, and the fact that they will not be kind. She has seen too many of them to expect kindness from him.

They reflect back to her the bitterness of truths she will not swallow - but for him, gladly.

She is mortal, and will age along with him, but he will go on when he dies, while she remains in a soupy nothingness.

She does not know that to him, she is a kind of penance, a reminder of all his failures in the life he led in the previous world.

She does not know that each moment he spends beside her filthy-tainted-human-mortal body is agony, for all that he smiles.

She does not know, because he does not want her to.

He's lost, but still strong.

* * *

Review Replies:

**soccer-cutie67:** It could have been a full-fic (or even a semi-series), but I was just way too lazy. xD When I get time, though, it may become a three-part story. Watch for it.

**Inulover4eva:** I already wrote the Anna-Lyserg. It's already sitting somewhere on the Internet, and only I know the address… :) You know I love to torture. Or at least, you do now.

**asn water:** Eh, I admit it was a bit confusing, my style. I'll probably revamp it when I have time. RenxAnna will probably be sometime after AnnaxLyserg.

**SquirrelFraulein:** Ooh.. scary. And tough. I'll try! xD

**Tlad:** He's not stupid! –hugs him adoringly- And manliness (Spirits, what a funny word) aside, I like the original Japanese better. Everything flows there, whereas in the dub it's choppy/choppy/choppy. And perhaps the reason it sounds like a girl is because it's played by a girl…? –snigger- And I like Len's deep voice; there's something very cute about it. Although there's also something to be said about that nasal British accent. –snickers again-

And Zeke in the English version is too blunt. The Japanese version makes him more subtle, and it's the Japanese version I play when I write the fanfics.

There; don't cry. If it makes you feel any better, I'm planning a side-series, Hao-centric, where he breaks his stony little heart.


	5. Drabble Five: AnnaxLyserg

Every Pairing Under the Sun

**Author's Note:** Ahaha. I found my list! –waves it around triumphantly in the mess that is her room- And I also finished writing the AnnaLyserg. Okay, I definitely enjoyed this. –edgy look- I didn't think I would, as I only support Asakura/Anna pairings. (YOUNG Asakura Pairings, not stuff like Kino/Anna and Yohmei/Anna. –twitchlaugh-) But this was strangely fun and… yeah. I like it. X3 I hope that you do too. List is here: MarcoxLyserg, KororoxManta (Queenstheif Draconess Herselve, you ROCK for reminding me about this one!), HaoxSquirrel (Not /you/ as a squirrel, hopefully? Because I have a fixed idea of how the squirrel's going to end up, and it's not pretty.) YohxRen, YohxOC, YohxHoro, HaoxAnna, YohxTamao, Yoh/Anna. With bouts in between, perhaps, as I go off on random tangents for the ignored minor characters. xP

**Disclaimer**: Be VERY glad I don't own Shaman King, as one of my future projects has Hao paired with a squirrel. –edgy look-

* * *

Drabble Five: Midnight…

It is midnight.

She steps outside, feeling the easy chill of the evening dance across her skin, an elaborate waltz that beats in time to the ticking clock. Her footsteps are quick and solid, and do not reflect her regret in leaving behind the boorish crowd that plays at video games still, even at such an early (late?) hour of the morning.

Yoh, too, she has left behind; he did not ask to accompany her, and she did not demand that he come. It is a place where they will always be separated; he upon the brink of understanding her, she on the edge of frustration with him. A chasm they can never cross.

The crunch of gravel underfoot and she whirls angrily upon the intruder, only to suddenly sober into solemnity and a barely controlled hatred. Hao she loathes as a matter of fact, another obstacle that would prevent Yoh from attaining his position as Shaman King. (And even in the loss, he had won; the Fight was delayed and Yoh was... himself? Not Shaman King, at any rate, which cut at Anna ferociously.) But she, who has always been faithful and dedicated to a single cause, could not abide by a traitor.

It is all she can do to prevent the accusation from spilling out of her mouth every time she meets his gaze – those innocuous eyes of green fragile-glass. And it seems that he knows this, for in seeing her, he greets her with a ghostly-wan smile.

"Anna-sama."

"Lyserg."

She insults him by leaving off the honorific suffix, but it seems that he does not notice, striding past her to lean wearily upon the pond bridge's thin railing, aged beyond what his years should bestow.

They stand in silence, but only for a little while.

"Do you hate me?" He asks eventually, his voice a little quiet.

Carelessly, languidly, her shoulders move; up, down, quick and slow. "Hate? No." The lie flashes like quickfire through her teeth, gentled but still dangerous.

"But you still have not forgiven me?" He pursues the subject relentlessly, determined fire flashing through a gaze as legible as writing.

"Did you expect me to?"

"I—" He begins helplessly, but changes tactics when he sees the frown begin to dig through her brows. "No, I didn't."

"Then what is the use of asking?"

He is silent a little while longer, then says quietly, "You must understand what it was like. To want something so badly that you cannot be thrown off track by minor things-"

"_Minor_ things?" She is a little offended, but in this sudden drunken midnight, cannot summon more, not even the ice-cold rage that quenches her enemies in a moment. Briefly, she ponders this, then decides that never again is she staying up this late.

"Things, then," he retorts, but is unperturbed by her interruption, flowing smoothly around it like a river about a boulder. "The X-Laws went against Hao, while Yoh's team seemed on the verge of an alliance with them at times. I could not afford that; not an alliance."

"Then you never knew Yoh at all." She says coldly, firm like the ice that crackles from the trees as she stands beneath them to peer into the lake. "He is not on anybody's side; they are on his. And he never pledges his loyalties; the best he does is to align his own side adjacently to another's, and even that can be only temporary."

He shrugs, accepts the insults, and smiles a little. "I couldn't trust him." Lyserg says softly. "Not if I didn't want to lose myself. You saw how it was with Ren, with Horo-horo. They can live without him now no more than they could live without air or sun."

"They would heal without him." She says carelessly, and does not know whether the words come from solemnity or a cavalier flippancy.

"Let us speak of you, then, since you do not care for them; would _you_ heal without him?" His eyes bore into hers, and suddenly there are tears, lightly so as to skim the surface, but ingrained so deeply that she fears letting him go without his reply.

She wonders now why and when she ever started caring that the green-haired boy could cry.

"No, but that's different."

"Different," He says, leaning back, "and in many ways the same. You know how it is, then. And you know that it'd be best if I didn't lose myself." He sucks in a breath before expelling another one, smiling faintly as the mist from his lungs skims the air, twisting and curling upon itself before vanishing.

"Best." She is scornful of the word, as she is of many things, having heard Ryu boast of his 'best place', of Ren and HoroHoro each determined to 'be the best', those arrogant boys with hearts full of pride and empty minds. "Better to lose yourself to Yoh than to a cause that will have drained you of all that is useful and leave you with nothing when it is gone."

Seeing that the tears have no effect upon her, he puts his shoulders back, straightens, and shakes away the drops as though they are only rainwater.

She says, angrily, "_Have_ you any plans for your life now that _he_ is gone?" Even in his demise, she does not grant Hao the privilege of having his name spoken.

He shrugs, his eyes distant, though his elbows slip from the water-slick railing, causing him to stumble. She watches this impassively, and does not offer to help him – nor does he ask it. "I think I shall finish school." He says calmly, and turns his green-glass eyes to the ivory outfit that he wears still, though it has long ago been sullied by things more sinister than dirt. "And then I shall go onto university, and start up my own detective agency as—" He catches his breath so that it streams out in an angry, thin hiss rather than a muffled sob, "As my father would have wanted."

"The dead never want anything except to be alive again." The itako snaps, and the thin line of her mouth wavers only a little as he turns to glance at her.

His eyes are dead things. "I," the diviner said softly, "would like to think otherwise. Is it so much to ask?"

"If you want to deceive yourself, it's no matter to me." She says coldly. Shaking her hair back, she turns away, to tip her head up and stare a little at the full moon. "Go back to the house." It is not a suggestion, but a command.

Tremulously, he wavers, and breaks into a smile. "I think," Lyserg says gently, "that I have had enough of being commanded for one lifetime. The X-Laws were quite enough."

"I am not the X-Laws." Her lips curl back from her teeth, a growl that is more animalistic than human. Her gaze, though she does not turn it away from the moon, is both sweepingly contemptuous and not a little angry – she is not certain why he gets her like this, but he does.

"Hai," he agrees amiably, "You're not. But you are admirable all the same, for your strength."

Strength. He is so obsessed with it that he would have killed for it, if he could have gotten it on his side to defeat Hao. She wonders, a little idly, whether he still wants that strength with the wholeheartedness he had exposed before, or whether he is calmer now, more likenable to the boys inside who are drooling over their video games and controllers.

Out loud, she says, "Considering your previous tastes, I don't think that's much of a compliment."

"Take it as you will," he replies, and sounds a little more tired now. "Only know that I wish that I still had something like that strength to depend on."

She grits her teeth, clenching them together so that the words that years with Yoh have taught her must be said will _not_ be said. "Any- friend- of- Yoh's- can- depend- on- whatever- Yoh- can- offer- them." _Including my aid_, she means, but does not say it; it would be adding insult to injury, that the words have escaped her and that she would be pleasant about them.

He glances at her; she can feel that innocent agate burrowing into the back of her skull, as though attempting to divine her thoughts that way. A soft puff of air is indrawn into his lungs as he shudders a moment in the brittle cold of the early morning, and speaks: "Yoh cannot offer me anything that I want."

"You want strength, he has it." She says it in a deadpanning voice, and cannot help but suppress a thin-lipped smile at her own lack of enthusiasm.

"You know as well as I do that to accept his alliance is to fall subservient to him, to be unable to live without him." Lyserg says quietly. "And if that happens, well, you're so absorbed that you can't help but notice that he gives the same amount of himself to everyone. You are nothing special to him unless you make yourself stand out, and everybody's so occupied in doing that that you can't do it." A crooked smile lifts the corners of his lips in a moue that is anything but amused. "You're lucky; you're his fiancé. He _has_ to notice you."

For a minute, a split-cold-second, she stands shocked, before understanding filters through her thoughts.

"Yoh's mine." She says immediately, whirling upon him, eyes icy. Glancing up in surprise at her vehemence, Lyserg smiles.

"I know." The dowser says, with a little grin that she does not understand. "Didn't I say that I didn't want him?"

"Did you?" She counters.

"I thought that I did. If I did not, let me say it now: I have no interest in taking your fiancé from you. His strength is a powerful thing, but its price is more than I can afford."

"More than you are willing to give, at any rate." The blonde retorts, and caught off-guard, he laughs.

She ponders him for a little while, then asks, "Then what _do_ you want?"

He shrugs his shoulders carelessly. "What everyone wants." He says in reply. "Strength. Success. Happiness."

"In that order?"

"I know what I am most likely to get in this life." He counters. "My wishes are in the order that they are likely to happen."

"How very pragmatic." She says dryly.

"Like you are." He retorts, brushing back the strands of green that have fallen into his face again. For a moment, he looks very young, a child with unkempt hair and an outfit that is sullied by the day's work. And as always, Anna acts by instinct; reaching out with fingers that are resolute and firm, tucking a missed strand behind his ear with casual certainty that she's doing exactly what is necessary.

She brushes against the hollow area where the curve of his bone meets his throat in the process, and the contact is electric; a jump of static from his skin to hers so that her breath quickens, stops for a moment, before the world begins to revolve again. She does not see how his eyes, too, have widened into startled circlets, that he is staring at her with a renewed intensity and curiosity that has nothing to do with the fact that they are both bound resolutely to Yoh.

"There." The blonde says, suppressing the faint tremor in her voice.

"You have my gratitude." The young dowser replies.

"Is that so?" Anna says coolly, and he gives a quick, brief nod.

"In that case," The itako resumes her words, "you may walk me back to the house. It's cold, and I should be getting back in." With the arrogance of certainty, she offers her hand to him. After only the pause of a moment, he puts a hand on his hip, so that she might have an arm to place her hand upon. And in that stiff position of gallantry, they begin the short walk back up to the house.

-end-

* * *

**Author's Note**: I know, I know, terrible. –baps head madly- It's just that Anna and Lyserg are so hard to get together! Anna loves Yoh so much that her devotion is hard to get around without getting her completely OOC.

What'd you think?

**InuLover4Eva**: Hopefully you liked your request… at least as much as I did, which would be difficult considering I enjoyed it a wee bit too much. x3

**Queenstheif Draconess Herselve:** I absolutely will! I kept meaning to do this a while back, and forgetting. Now it's a sticky on the board, so I'll remember. :) Thanks! And what's FAMR stand for? –has forgotten-

**soccer-cutie67:** There – an update. MarcoxLyserg next, and I have only the vaguest ideas of what to do for that one… It's looking violent so far. -.-; Yeah, trust me to be violent.

**Jojo-Kyoyama: **If you want to read a YohAnna, you can read my chapterfic _You're Mine_, or the short one-shot that I wrote for Valentine's Day. As it is at the moment, however, YohAnna is far too easy, and I'm going to push it to the back of my list. –sweatdrop-


	6. Drabble Six: MarcoxLyserg

Every Pairing Under the Sun

**Author's Note:** I may look like I'm being unproductive, but that's only because my drabbles this week were too short to put on So I stuck them in my fic-journal, as per usual for me. If you want to read my other things, they're there. The link's on my profile.

**List**: RenxAnna, RenxNichrome, KororoxManta, HaoxSquirrel, HaoxAmidamaru (YohxSpirit of Fire bonus. :P), HaoxManta,YohxRen, YohxOC, HorohoroxManta, YohxHoro, HoroxRen, HaoxAnna, YohxTamao, YohxAnna.

Yes, I know, I stuck RenxAnna ahead of everything else. I had a good idea for it. Hopefully it shall be funny.

I mean, if you enjoy having Ren with a box of chocolates impaled on his pointy hair.

Warning: I may interrupt it at any time to throw in a Chocolove/Tamao. If you don't like that, keep it to yourself. You _don't_ want to hear me rant about how much Chocolove is ignored. For once – just once! – I'd like to see so much as a _one shot_ dedicated to Chocolove. Possibly his romantic exploits, but also Chocolove. I mean, people whinge that Ryu and Faust are ignored. Chocolove doesn't get so much as a scene in most fics!

And when he does, his jokes are terrible. Worse than usual, I mean.

**Disclaimer**: I don't own Shaman King. Woe. Alas.

**WARNING:** The drabble ahead IS rated for suggestivity and sensual themes. (Not R, but just barely within the boundaries of PG-13.) If you don't like that sort of thing, refrain from reading it, as it shall doubtless only make you sick.

* * *

Drabble Six: A Greater Darkness

- **I** -

He had said, _I wish I could be strong._ and had cried those free-flowing tears until he had realized that the arms that held him were not anymore sympathetic than the world had been to him, this green-haired boy with the smile all in pieces.

He himself remembered holding him away, feeling the fluidity of the bones beneath his callused touch, saying _If you wished it enough, you would be._

Adding _You do not want it enough_.

He remembered the sleekness of green strands beneath his touch, how they went through his hands like water and slid away.

He never could keep what he loved best.

- **II** -

He does not remember anymore how first he came to Jeanne-sama (or was it that she came to him?). He only knows the X-Laws; they who have made all of his life worth dying for.

He hates Lyserg, sometimes, for what he does to him, cups the evidence of his desire and grits his teeth because one hand isn't enough to hold it, he needs two and he's holding on so tightly and suddenly there is a release into dreadful ecstasy that is sin and delight at the same time.

He would gladly give up his life for the cause of the X-Laws, the X-Laws who have made his life worth dying for; except for Lyserg.

Lyserg, who makes his life worth living.

- **III** -

He did not understand at first, huddled almost _clinging_ with a child's embrace to the gun that had been thrown out of the Iron Maiden. Marco liked things in black and white and what was so easily understood that it came out in vivid streaks.

The Iron Maiden had made it so clear, the division between black and white so much that the lines blaze and they cut him, purged him, rid him of all that was unworthy. She made love comprehensible; a beautiful thing that would redeem the world after its filth had been cleansed away by fire.

Lyserg made things dark again, drawing a child's finger across the bright line that divided Marco's light and dark so that they smudged and came together, forming tiny pools of gray in which he drowned.

_The road to Hell_, he remembered_, is paved with good intentions._

And he could see every ion of those good intentions in a pair of wide green eyes, beautiful and hateful because of what he saw in them; redemption without purity, freedom without purpose.

- **IV** -

Hatred, he thought once, did not suit Lyserg – those exquisitely young features distorting into something old, the roots of which reached back into an antediluvian age that he could no longer fully remember. Too quick, too passionate.

Too infectious.

- **V** -

_I need to be strong_, he says, but this time says it differently, with hatred and with a strength that hurts Marco even as he smiles. It is the beginning of knowledge, the passage of plucking the apple from the tree and consuming it, seeds and all.

_Stay with us_. He replies, though he means stay with me, stay with me until I fade and die. _Jeanne-sama is strong enough for all of us. You do not need to be strong._

_I need to be. I will be. I will suffer everything that Jeanne suffers if only I may gain it._

_Will you truly?_ He should have known the answer long before it left his lips.

And Lyserg replies: _I will._

- **VI** -

The first night that he came, Marco was afraid that he might break him, and then have to explain the matter to Jeanne. But how to explain it to she who had never been tempted? (He did not understand the saint's temptations of breaking down, though he did now, with more clarity than ever he had when only dreaming his chaste dreams.) How to explain the need for Lyserg, caught somewhere between his lust and his heart, coalescing to become stronger than he could stand?

He did not explain it, to himself, to Lyserg, to Jeanne. But took him every time he came.

- **VII** -

He abhors how Lyserg looks at Yoh, how he wavers a little from his purpose; uncertain and unsanctified, a little whiter each time so that, towards the end, he looks like the resurrection of unholy bones.

_Unholy bones_, thinks Marco_, that are my revival._ And does not know in which sense of the sentence he means the words.

- **VIII** -

He remembers a man with sunlight hair and glasses, and a mind that would never understand this need, a mind filled with its own pompous righteousness and the arrogance of serving Jeanne-sama. He remembers faith that never needed love, and diligence that never needed prompting.

Wearily, a little wearily, he wonders where that man has gone now, and why his mind is dark with silence every time as he plunges into ecstasy.

- **IX** -

Out of guilt or some other emotion (he brushes off the thought that it is guilt; guilt is for the unsanctified, not for Marco of the upstanding X-Laws who shall save the souls of the world), he tries to alleviate the pain for Lyserg. The boy holds himself stiffly each time, coming in darkness and going away like a dream, though no dream has ever showed bruises in the morning.

He tries to count to ten, holding his breath to keep himself still and await Lyserg's pleasure too. But then he loses count and track, and falls into darkness alone.

- **X** -

X is for ten as well as for the X-Laws and their cross thrown askew, and sometimes he wonders if it isn't more than that – if his cross wasn't slanted a long time ago, and if it isn't Lyserg who has shown him some measure of truth at last.

He leans against the younger boy in slumber, takes off his glasses to clean them, watching the moon explode into blurs of color and ivory. Yellow so bright as to injure the eyes falls across his forehead, strands that no lover's touch will ever stroke away.

Beneath his back, he catches a sigh, a stirring, and then, a timid voice, threading through the air like a mouse's touch.

"Will my penance make me stronger, Marco-sama?"

He lies between his teeth, standing between Lyserg and everything that he has ever wanted, feeling the clench of sin even as the stirring of pleasure reminds him of his reasons.

"Yes." He says. "In suffering, there is strength."

He tilts the boy's head up, fingers clenching his chin with firm knowledge. "Believe in me." He whispers, but even as he says it, can see the stirrings of doubt and betrayal in the summer-green eyes where, he hopes, winter shall never come.

The desires of sin were quenched; substituted with the clenchings of a different kind.

Marco never could keep what he loved best.

* * *

(end)

**Author's Note:** Odd, I know – the next one shall be an off-beat comedy. Er. With romantic overtones, of course. I hope. _You_ hope.

hastens on to reader reviews before she can be shot-

**Garnet-chan:** -gasp- Sacrilege! Besides, you know that Hao would never sully his hands by actually strangling the squirrel. I'm thinking of something quick. And hot. And as for your pairings… (I can't believe I took you seriously and put them there. They're on my to-do list. Gah.)

**PrismaticMage:** Hope you enjoyed it. I would have written something a little calmer and perhaps a little less scary, but Marco…

wasn't cooperating. –eyes the tied up Marco- Er. I have no idea how he got that way.

**Kawaii Koneko92:** It's there, it's there; calm down! –prods- And thanks. :)

**Inulover4eva:** Who're you calling little? –puffs up-

**asn water:** Yep, you can, but there'd be no point seeing as how I only intend to do RenxAnna and it's already up there. :D Don't mind, do you?

**KimBob:** Currently, it's down as HoroRen, but if I get an idea, it may change. Depends on a LOT of things.

**Unbreakable Itako:** :D Thank you! –feels all, you know, special and stuff- I love Anna, and try not to drag her out of character too much, so that's good.

**Squirrel Fraulein:** No killing? Aww… -misery- How about torturing? Is torturing open?

**Nekoian:** I find it odd that no one's ever thought of a HaoxManta before, seeing how they interact in the show. Hm. Thanks:)

**love-chibis:** Aah, you are a minor-character's fan. I immediately love you. –glomp- Although it's going to be tough, considering how little I know about Nichrome's personality…

A challenge. –waffles-


	7. Drabble Seven: RenxAnna

**Every Pairing Under the Sun**

**Author's Note**: This was going to become a three-chapter story and involve Hao and the majority of the SK cast from both the manga and the anime. However, time constraints and excessive laziness enabled me to type this up in about three hours. (Not to mention the fact that I wanted to get chapter 9 of YM up – and it is, now. –polishes nails and looks proud of her multitasking-) Perhaps later I'll expand upon the tale, but for the moment, here it stands in all of its 5,400-words-glory. Enjoy. :)

Oh, and before you move on, a warning: this takes place post-anime, in an AU where Yoh _did_ die. No excessive spoilers are given, so don't worry too much on that score; if you haven't seen the series end yet, simply assume that this is a random AU where Hao attained Kingship and Yoh recently died.

**List**: RenxNichrome, RenxTamao, Ren x Lyserg, KororoxManta, HaoxSquirrel, HaoxLyserg, HaoxAmidamaru (YohxSpirit of Fire bonus. :P), HaoxManta, Yoh x Lyserg, ChocolovexPirika (liable to be moved), YohxRen, YohxOC, HorohoroxManta, YohxHoro, HoroxRen, HaoxAnna, YohxTamao, YohxAnna.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Shaman King. If I had, Hao would have gotten far more attention than Yoh ever did. And there would have been so many shonen-ai hints in it that 4Kids would have never offered to dub it.

* * *

Drabble Seven: A Conventional Courtship

They held his funeral on a rainy Monday.

Anna remembered him, hair rumpled (wasn't it always?), getting out of bed one leg at a time, stepping reluctantly, feet dragging to accompany a pouting mouth that protested the Monday-ness. She remembered her anger – a vivid spark that had chased him down the corridor and whapped him sharply over the head for laziness and impertinence.

Once, the memories had been a source of pride for her, assurance in her strength. Not so any longer.

She ignored the susurration of whispers, like resurrected ghosts, all around her, and merely endured through the funeral. He would have never liked this set up, this too-woeful melodrama that wept of a saintly Yoh that bore no resemblance to the one that the itako had known – he would have fallen asleep in it. (And she would have been forced to discipline him – i.e. hit him – but that was carefully edited out of the scene that coursed through her mind. Mourners were permitted scant luxuries but this, thankfully, was one of them.)

And so she did, too, dozing off to the dissonant lullaby of a thousand mourning voices.

* * *

"Oi, Ren!"

"Kisama." He snapped without looking up. "Shut up. Have you no respect for Yoh?"

"Be a little more polite." The boy whose hair resembled a microphone puff looked mildly affronted. "Don't you have any respect for the dead?" He could have bitten his own tongue off as Ren raised his gaze accusingly. His eyes were stormswept, as though he held a tempest trapped within their stare – a tempest that did not take well to being so entrapped.

He had understood by now; he had had a few weeks to recover and come to terms with the truth. But there was still some fraction of him that did not believe in Yoh's death. He was the kind of boy that was too vibrant to be dead; to stay dead. And his death had transformed him into the martyr that his life never would have.

"What the hell do you want, Chocolove?" The violet-haired shaman growled out from between clenched teeth, eyes radiating angry static at the intrusion. "Get it over and be done with it; the ceremony's still going on, you know."

Chocolove shrugged a little, liquid brown eyes vivid with concern. "Look at Anna." He said simply.

Ren turned.

"No, you idiot!" The comedian snapped, resisting the urge to jump up and down – or use Ren's favorite insult. "The _other_ side."

Eyes narrowed with menace, Ren turned again.

And stopped.

She had fallen asleep against the pew, wiry-thin body untensed for the first time in what was possibly a week so that the sleepless shadows beneath her eyes were exposed. Even the dimness of the church light did not deal well with her; Anna had never had the kind of beauty that could be examined beneath illumination, and her unpretty features were rendered still more so by the bland luminance of the cathedral.

Nevertheless, there was something very pitiable about the way that she curled instinctively into herself, the way that her head nestled automatically into the circle of her arms, and a tiny sigh threatened tremulously, lining the borders of her mouth.

"Do you see her?" Chocolove murmured, and for once, his voice was not laden with humor, but with a bleak sadness.

Irritably, Ren whirled around and dealt him a sharp blow. "Idiot." He snapped, presiding over the cringing Chocolove. "I'm not blind. So she's alone. So what?"

"Then you _don't_ see."

"I see!" Retorted Ren violently, gesturing expressively with his glaive. He had never liked to be addressed as inferior in any way.

"Do you understand, then?" Chocolove inquired, a little grudgingly, rubbing his nose rather meaningfully.

The Chinese adolescent regarded him coldly. "This seems to be a rather tasteless place for you to ask for an apology for my poking your nose all those times." He responded pointedly. "Not to mention the fact that I'm _not_ sorry. At all."

"I didn't want an apology!" The black shaman exclaimed exasperatedly. At Ren's arched brow, however, he amended, rather quickly, "All right, yes I do. And someday I'll beat the crap of you and get it out of you, but—" He skipped hastily ahead, seeing the boy's impatient expression. "Look, you were the closest to Yoh-kun, and now that he's dead…" He paused, meaningfully.

Ren waited.

Chocolove waited.

"…"

"…"

"………"

"………"

Finally, left eyelid twitching, Ren jabbed the other boy sharply in the bulbous nose with his spear. "Kisama." He spat over the comedian's contorted body as the smaller boy writhed in pain. "I have better things to do than listen to you at _Yoh's funeral._"

"Great Spirits." Groaned Chocolove, still clutching his wounded nose as he rose once again to his feet. "Must I spell out _everything_ for you? All right, then. In some cultures, when a man dies, leaving his wife behind, his closest relative or unmarried friend would take her to ensure that she would not live out her life in misery." He glanced significantly upwards, attempting to wiggle his eyebrows and failing miserably.

Understanding dawned, like a sun crawling vaguely out of bed to check its alarm clock.

Ren looked to Chocolove with some mild amalgamation of horror and disgust. "You mean…"

Seeing that his student had comprehended, Chocolove nodded and stroked his beard (a false one that had appeared in timely fashion) wisely. "You understand at last, then, what must be done."

In only moments he was doubled over in pain again.

"I can't believe that you'd want me to try to marry Anna to Hao." The Chinese shaman snarled, lips twisting into a fine expression of revulsion. "Especially when Yoh's newly died. That's—sadistic. Even discounting the fact that he looks exactly like Yoh and behaves nothing like him." Instinctively, he glanced towards the pew that the newly proclaimed Shaman King occupied. All around him for at least three rows, the pews were empty; people had sense enough to want to keep a safe distance from their new sovereign. (He had not yet begun his holocaust within the human world, though no one knew precisely why this was so.)

Where most people attending the small funeral were in tears, he had pressed one hand to his heart, his other hand to rest his head upon, and was smiling in a fashion that made the presiding minister most nervous. The fact that he was wearing a robe of living fire for the occasion wasn't helping either. It was most distracting to be attempting to listen to a rather boring sermon with someone burning in front of you.

"I wasn't talking about Hao!" Chocolove shouted at last. His voice echoed throughout the room, rebounding off of the ornate arches of the ceiling, causing people to cease in the midst of their half-dozes, wake, and turn to him in bemusement.

Hastily, he modulated his volume. "I was talking about _you_." He hissed through clenched teeth, still holding his much-abused nose. "You were the first shaman to ever encounter Yoh."

"No I wasn't." Ren corrected him. "Tamao was."

"Yes, but…" Chocolove swallowed forcibly. This bit was going to be difficult. "Tamao can't marry Anna."

Ren blinked. Chocolove blinked back.

"You want _me_ to… _what_?"

"I don't want you to do anything." The shaman corrected him hastily, attempting to re-establish himself in the other boy's good graces before Ren could recover enough of his ordinary sense to attempt to murder him. "I just think that it'd be a very good idea, that's all. She's alone now, and the Asakura family can't do very much for her. They don't understand Yoh," he pressed a hand to his heart in an unconscious gesture, "the way that we did. As his companions. And you were the closest of them to him. We were just his followers; you were his _rival_."

"Besides," the boy added prosaically. "It's either you or Hao."

The ornate church doors slammed shut on his nose. And it was quite possible that as Ren stomped irritably down the steps, Chocolove's howls of pain could be heard throughout all the city.

* * *

"…That's not a bad idea!" 

"…What?"

Ren turned a glowering stare upon his sister; one that rapidly amended itself into a blushing good humor. _Gah_. He never could keep himself in his brooding moods around Jun; a fact that tried him rather sorely, considering the fact that he had only to enter his grandfather's presence to be put into them. It was most difficult to keep himself level in a room that contained the both of them.

"Well, Chocolove-san's right." The viridian-haired woman pointed out, sipping daintily at her tea. Her lacquered black fan snapped out in a vibrant display of silk as she fluttered it momentarily in a graceful wrist-gesture before placing it directly over her face so that her smile was hidden from her foul-tempered brother's sight. "Cultures _did_ do that."

"Huh." The violet-haired boy was supremely disdainful. "Not the Chinese culture."

"True." Jun nodded solemnly, though her eyes glittered with what could be taken as mischief. "Although I think that a little back, our branch of the family was tainted with a bit of blood from one of the cultures that _do_…"

She stared reprovingly at her little brother. "Now, now, Ren." She said mildly, dabbing at her splattered cheek with care before applying the same handkerchief to the boy's own mouth. "There's no need to go spitting your tea over everything. The silks are very hard to wash out, and I'm sure you don't want to cause more work for the maids than is necessary. It _is_ so very hard to get maids for a house that has such a haunted reputation." She added regretfully.

The spike of hair dipped as Ren sipped disgustedly at the lukewarm remnants of his tea, nearly impaling her eye. "They should earn their pay for once." The boy said shortly. "It wouldn't hurt them to work."

"Well…" With her polished refinement, Jun deftly turned the subject back to the matter that Ren had been hoping not to address. "Anyway, I think that the family would well approve of your match with Anna-sama. She has the makings of a rather powerful itako, and every inch of the ambition necessary to grow into it."

"You just don't think that she's a match for you right now." Her sibling added bluntly, but now the curves of his mouth unwound and twisted into something unpleasantly amused.

"Not on her own, she isn't." Jun responded simply. "With the thousand-eighty, she might have been, but now, alone, and especially demoralized as she is—" She paused delicately. " Of course, with your intervention…"

Ren sighed. "Just don't—" He glanced up, and immediately regretted it; Jun had carefully rearranged her position into a kowtow, and was now glancing up at him with innocuously shining black eyes, liquid with warmth and pleading…

"Fine."

Left eyelid twitching, he set the porcelain cup down with iron control and rose to his feet. A liquid quick movement followed that action; one that her eye was unable to follow. But as he left the room, without much fuss, the china vessel splintered into a thousand dainty pieces, each sliced evenly with the careful blade of his favored weapon.

Jun stared down at the broken cup.

"Oh dear." She said, to no one in particular. "That was from the Ming dynasty."

* * *

How exactly did one court a woman? Ren had no idea – it had never been a necessary theme in the course of his life. Now, apparently, because of a few words from Chocolove, his sister, and the rules of cultures that were probably dead (and for a good reason, he thought savagely, stomping down the cemented sidewalks with his glaive in hand), he was expected to do what he had never done before.

"Master?" The Chinese warrior who was his ghost hovered anxiously to his side, regarding him with a certain amount of worry. "Is everything all right?"

"Of course it is!" Tightly, Ren whirled upon Bason, eyes glowing with fury. "Everything is bloody fine! Just because my sister's manipulating me and Chocolove has gotten some history into that fool head of his doesn't mean that anything's wrong! What makes you think that anything's wrong!" Noting the mild tremulousness of his companion, Ren scrubbed the back of his free hand over his eyes ferociously.

"Great Spirits, man." He snapped. "You're supposed to be a warlord of some kind! Why are you so terrified of a _teenager's_ rages?" Molten gold eyes cut sharply at the armoured figure as the boy tapped a foot impatiently, evidently expecting a reply to what was phrased as a rhetorical question. "Well?"

"I don't know, Master." Bason said humbly, forbearing to mention that Ren in a temper was more fearsome than any of the thousands of enemies that Bason had faced in his lifetime.

A scathing look answered his statement, but faded as Ren lost patience and resumed his pacing down the sidewalk. "Courting." He muttered under his breath, eyes vivid with golden fury. "Courting such a—a female wolf. I'd rather kill myself."

Seeing that here was a place where he could offer advice at last, Bason ventured, "I could tell you a few good positions to insert your glaive if you would like to—"

The Chinese boy returned his paralysing glare to the faceless warrior. "You know, I think I remember telling you once to pick up a sense of when to shut up." He said, in a deceptively civil tone. "Since you appear to have disobeyed that order, _shut up_ for now, and I'll get back to you on the subject of your disobedience later."

"Yes, Master."

The lull that followed did not last for long. It rarely was in these present days; Ren had been well-accustomed to working in silence, but Yoh's death had unsettled something that was normally never touched within him.

He wondered briefly how that brat had inveigled his way so deeply into his life so that he had never noticed that other's intrusion until the latter had been forcibly removed. It felt…

As though something deep within him, something necessary to living, as necessary as breathing and a beating heart, had been removed, lamed, broken, and here he was now trying to function as an ordinary being without all of the parts that made one up…

"Bason?" He inquired briefly.

"Yes, Master!"

"…I didn't issue an order yet."

"Ah. In which case, Yes, Master, In Tones Of Distinct Attention And Potential Obedience."

Attempting to run callused, well-worked fingers through his hair (and nearly getting stabbed in the process), Ren contended himself with looking broodingly irritable; an expression that made little change from his usual air.

"How on Earth," he said at last, after having mulled it over for a few moments, "do you get a woman?"

Bason looked faintly edgy at this question. "Well, you see, erm…" He subsided into an embarrassed silence. "Hasn't your mother or your father gone over the basics of this with you yet..?"

Mild surprise surged through his veins, and the Chinese shaman turned to regard his guardian ghost with full alertness. "Were they supposed to?" He inquired sharply.

Bason looked still more uncomfortable; at least, insofar as it was possible for someone who was merely a glowing expression hidden beneath a golden helmet. "Well, usually it's expected that the parents be the ones to go over the details of how babies are made with their son—"

"Wh—no!" Looking mildly appalled, Ren shook his head firmly. "I don't want to know _that_." He said rapidly. "Besides which, I already know."

"Oh." Bason looked, Ren thought, rather a little too relieved. Unconsciously, despite not precisely wanting to know, he found himself wanting to ask Bason anyway, simply to watch that expression of tortured misery and obedience coalesce upon the ghost's features. "Well then, Master, what do you want to know about the getting of women?"

"How one usually goes about courting them, naturally."

"Oh." The warlord was silent a moment longer – soldiers were not, by nature, refined connoisseurs of women. What they wanted, they generally took, regardless of time or place. Romance generally took place after the fact and fuss were over. To have romance _prior_ was new territory for Bason, and he was now struggling through it.

"I heard," he ventured, "that chocolates don't go amiss."

Ren looked rather wary. This sounded just a trifle too easy.

"Chocolates?"

* * *

"Chocolates?"

She glared disdainfully down at the gold-threaded box, dark eyes sharp with scorn and a fragmented dignity that she carried with all the grace she had ever maintained. Weariness pulsed within her stare, but was rapidly swept away by her sensibility – Anna had never been one to mourn excessively; one to be so loving that her love eclipsed everything that made her who she was.

It was only that she had wound herself around Yoh over their mutual childhood so that, in a sense, he had _become_ who she was – whom she defined herself with. To have him gone…

"Chocolates." She repeated, still in that rather dreadful monotone.

Ren, however, was growing rather impatient. "Open the bloody box and eat them already, would you!" He snarled. "I went through the entire supermarket, most of the department stores, half of the candy store and the majority of a pharmacy before I found these! If I spent that much time finding them, you could _at least_ stop sounding like I'd picked them off the floor and eat them!"

Dark eyes located him and froze him into place with her narrow gaze. "Manta hasn't dropped by lately." She said coldly. "The floors have been unswept. Would you like to do it for me?" _You will be, regardless of your own will, if you don't close your mouth now._ Her gaze implied. (Ren, looking infuriated, still managed to close his mouth again at her threat; HoroHoro, Manta, Ryu, and Yoh had always spent their time cleaning her house. He did not intend to join their legion.) Then, as though satisfied with the results of her threats, she returned her stare to the box.

"They look… expensive." She opined at last.

"They ought to." Ren grumped. "Thank the Great Spirits they were on sale and only cost me a few hundred yen."

Glittering eyes turned to survey him coldly. "I beg your pardon…?" Anna said clearly…

* * *

_Women_, fumed Ren, stalking away from the Asakura residence, shoulders taut with anger, lips tightly sealed against the words that he might speak if he opened his mouth. The passersby scooted to the farthest edges of the sidewalk in order to avoid brushing against the boy whose hair seemed to have veritably doubled in size, and whose livid gaze spat golden sparks of flame at the world. _They say they want chocolates, and then they treat the chocolates that they get as though it's dirt. It's not as though the chocolates were cheap, either_. His eyes deepened still further in their intensity as he kicked moodily at the ground. _If the Taos didn't have a reputation to keep up for generosity, I'd go back and make her pay me back for them._

He had half a mind to give up immediately, but there was something far too – intriguing about the situation to allow him to stop now.

If he had been more impartial, able to see the situation with a detached eye, he would have seen it as anyone would have; that Ren had been challenged.

And a Tao, regardless of situation, instance, or subject, had never been able to resist a challenge…

"Uh, Master?" Bason hovered anxiously to his side, luminescent eyes glowing with something akin to fearfulness as he regarded the adolescent who had adopted the position of his master at an early age.

The violet-haired shaman regarded his guardian spirit with some minute evidence of furthered displeasure, lips drawing taut, shoulderblades clenching beneath the carefully tailored shirt.

"Yes?" He responded tensely.

Bason hesitated. Throughout all of the li—_after_life that he had spent with Ren, he had learned a lesson that had been etched into his mind, engraved into it, and furthermore, stomped into his metaphorical forehead until his ears rang with it. And that was that the young master always had a double intent to everything that he did; he did not make mistakes, and he certainly did not take well to having his purposes questioned.

Still, there was something a little curious to this set of actions, and the Chinese warrior could not help but ask—

"Master, why do you still have the box of chocolates on your head where the young mistress Anna stuck it?"

"Kisama!" Ren roared at him, eyes narrow with fury. "It's because I can't get the godforsaken thing off! The caramels inside seem to be reacting with something in my hair, and they won't—come—off!" With each puff, he wrenched at the box impaled upon the spike of his hair; to no effect.

"Ah."

"And quit smiling at it! It's not funny; do you know how much money it takes to get my hair to stay like this! And how much _more_ money it'll take to get the caramel out!"

* * *

"I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU TRIED TO PICK UP A GIRL AND FAILED!"

Ren briefly regretted the lack of a cup of boiling tea in his hand so that he could pour its contents over the head of his rather unsympathetic blue-haired… former teammate.

"Shut up, Horohoro." He substituted instead, voice sufficiently menacing to put off even the most monstrous of monsters. If the most monstrous of monsters had been able to comprehend the subtle nuances of peril within his voice. And even if they had been unable to, they would have still, doubtless, retained more understanding upon the subject than the gawky blue-haired boy sprawled atop the couch.

"I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU TRIED TO PICK UP _ANNA_ AND FAILED!"

"Kisaaamaaaa…" Ren drawled dangerously, eyes glittering with an expression that was definitely not humor. It was only then that the Ainu noticed the presence of a rather pointed object in the hands of his companion.

"You, you…" Though he had begun to take more caution with his words upon noticing the lance, nevertheless the azure-haired shaman could not help but allow a little hysterical humor to permeate his voice. "You've gotta admit." He said, nudging the other boy, "It's pretty funny. I mean, you and Anna? It would never work out. You'd always be fighting over who would be the dominatrix when you're doing you-know-what. And let me tell you," he added thoughtfully, grinning with relish. "Anna would _win_, hands, feet, and various other appendages down."

"Huh." Now that the offense to his dignity had been removed, Ren had recovered his usual arrogance. "Don't be more of a fool than you already were, Horohoro. Chocolove is bad enough of an idiot to have on a team; I don't need two to bring the average I.Q. down. And I didn't come here to discuss my romantic endeavors with you"

"Or lack thereof." The Ainu snickered.

"—I came to ask you what you think that I should do next."

Struck by this, the shaman ceased speaking for a few moments.

"I'm sorry." He said, after a moment. "Did you, Tao Ren, just say that you were coming to me, Horohoro, for _advice_?"

"Don't let it go to your head." Ren advised him sardonically. "It's only because you have a sister."

"You, Tao Ren, are coming to me, Horohoro, for advice." It was only a matter of time before the hysterical laughter began.

Ren sighed tolerantly – and jabbed Horohoro meaningfully in the side. (All right, so he wasn't being all that tolerant.)

"Call your sister." He ordered the boy. In the midst of his shock, the blue-haired snowboarder did not think to protest his imperious command.

"Oi! Pirika!" He shouted, standing up abruptly. "Get yourself over here!"

"In a _minute_!" There came sounds of various crashes throughout the house, and finally, with a last resounding smash, Pirika slid open the paper screen door, garbed in a pink Hamtaro apron and looking distinctly irritated at the summons.

"What?" She demanded sharply, eyes passing over her brother to stop directly at Ren. "You rang?" She added, with far more sarcasm than was necessary – she had been biased against Ren upon hearing that he was the majority of the reasons that her brother had not led his own team.

"What do girls like as courting presents?" He inquired abruptly, eyelids dropping into a beautiful pose of insolence. And brusquely, her position altered – she flushed pinkly, and smiled with an odd coyness.

"Getting something for me?" She inquired sweetly.

Ren looked rather taken aback at this. "No." He said bluntly, after a moment's thought. "For Anna, actually."

"Oh." Suddenly, her features had recovered their disapproving expression, and her lips had formed a moue of distaste. "So you're _that_ sort of person."

"What sort?"

"The kind that moves in on another guy's girl after the guy dies." She uttered the definition with a certain amount of distaste, as though this were the most dishonourable deed to be invented since Julius Caesar had been stabbed in the back by a multitude of people simultaneously.

"I've always thought that those sorts of people were disgusting, I did." She went on virtuously.

The Chinese shaman allowed an expression of faint amusement to brush over his features, though irritation did not miss him entirely. "I'm sure." He replied, as noncommittally as possible. "Now, if you were a girl, what would you want?"

"I _am_ a girl."

He peered at her with an expression of mock-bemusement, clear malice displayed upon his features. "Oh." He said. "So you are. The resemblance to your brother was so strong that I couldn't really tell."

In only moments, he had been dumped out of the house onto the street.

"And don't think that you're welcome back in here, either!" Pirika shouted after him, and slammed the door shut with excess violence.

"I won't." He retorted, rising to his feet with unconcerned supremity, calling out to the figure that he could still see outlined against the light in the window. "Just tell me what I wanted to know and I won't trouble you again."

A tiny crack of light filtered through the door as she peered past it again. "Girls. Like. Clothes." She said shortly, and slammed the door shut again, leaving Ren to stew in his bemusement.

Clothes?

* * *

"What are _these_?"

She had removed the silken things from the box and was now gazing at them in vague distaste. Ren was, for possibly the first time in his life, turning a vivid crimson that enabled him to vaguely resemble a tomato.

"Clothing." He muttered under his breath.

"I know _that_." Said Anna sharply, and returned her attention to the odd garment-things. "My question is… what kind of clothing? How are you supposed to wear them?" Though the queries on their own sounded innocent enough, there was a barbed quality to the asking that caused the boy to hesitate in responding to her.

Firmly, she seized one of the oddly clingy silken things (oh; right – his sister wore _those _all the time, though this was black and crimson where hers were puffed-silk-viridian and black) and disappeared into the adjoining bathroom. When moments passed and she did not return, Ren followed after her, trailing after her with a faintly irritated air.

The door was ajar as he passed by it, and thereby he could not help but peer into it, receiving, for his efforts, a poke in the eye.

"_Gou_!" He shouted, employing Mandarin Chinese for his curses. "What was that for?"

"Perverts deserve all that come to them." Was her noncommittal reply. "I've done with your clothing, however. You can have them back if you like."

"They're not _my_ clothing." He snapped. "As though I would wear a dress."

"You wear a shirt that shows your stomach all the time, and low-cut pants." She noted blandly from beyond the door, her voice only faintly muffled by the paper screen. He could see the outline of her wiry-thin body against the light; it was not the slender things that he had once thought to dream of, but he felt compelled, somehow, to linger in any case.

"May I come in?" The violet-haired boy inquired, rather grudgingly, as though he begrudged her even that politeness.

The lacquered door slid open without further ado, and he stepped in.

The room was filled with the half-light of a flickering television whose images neither he nor she watched; occasionally he saw the reflection of a tiny woman play across her skin, then it was gone again, to be replaced by diffused dots and images whose wholeness his mind could not grasp. For it was she that he was concentrating upon.

She looked quite different in his sister's dresses, as though there were something contained in her that was released by attiring herself in clothing dissimilar to her usual plain outfit. And the magnetic thing that had commanded him to remain now pulled at him, stronger than ever in its resolution.

Vaguely, the shaman grew aware that she was staring at a photograph. As he stepped towards her, a hand drifted upwards, to offer the picture to him.

He took it with ginger fingers, buried in the illusion that perhaps it would burn him in ways that were not entirely physical, and would leave its marks there to be seen.

It was an ordinary enough photograph; the quality was only a rather poor black and white, with shades of gray that blurred through the photograph; though they, too, were worn and ill-made, as though set on a paper that had been rumpled and smoothed one too many times.

But it was the contents that truly drew interest; it was, as so many had been before it, of a boy and a girl, together, their fingers so tightly intertwined that one could have never said where his ended and hers began.

The boy was smiling at the camera, as he always had during the course of his life, and though the girl was not, she had tilted her head towards him, inclined in a vague sort of way that indicated benevolence. It was the expression in her eyes that the photographer had captured perfectly; trapped beneath the glass, wrapped in ink and plastic was the soul of everything she had once dreamt would keep until the end of her life. Her affection. Her hesitations. Her kindnesses. Her love.

Vaguely, Ren heard her say, "The dress you gave me… he gave me one too, rather like it." Her eyes flared briefly, illuminated with regret, though he could not have said for what. "It was all black."

"How ridiculous." He said, though the words came instinctively, and with none of the sensibility or shielding that he so carefully uttered his words with. "You look best in red. Red is a lucky color, as well."

"In some cultures, red is the color of mourning."

"Ridiculous." Said the Chinese shaman firmly, and, grasping her shoulders, shook her until he all but feared that her head would snap upon her shoulders. "Wake up." He said, though not unkindly. "You can't spend the rest of your life waiting for him to come back."

_It's what I was going to do_,_ though._ He thought, though he did not voice the words aloud._ It's what I would have done, if Chocolove had not spoken when he did. I would have spent the rest of my life waiting for Yoh to come back, because I never would have believed that he was dead unless I'd had proof – someone who could show me that he was with every moment._

Like a child, she spoke tonelessly, diffident, tentative. "He's dead?" And there was a world of tragedy in those two words that expressed everything she could not say to Ren – expressed what she could not say because he had felt the same emotions thudding beneath his own flesh far too many times.

"Yes." The boy said, rather too flatly and helplessly. "He is."

As an afterthought: "I'm sorry."

"You didn't kill him, now did you." It was not a question. Hesitantly, as though in a dream, she offered him her hand.

He took it, and thought that, in the half-light of the television screen, he could not tell where his fingers ended and hers began.

(end)

* * *

**Author's Note:** As Yoh is one of my favourite characters, this ficlet was a bit of a pain for me to write. I hope it didn't show… -wince-

Ah well; review replies:

**Nekoian:** I'm not sure why you feel better, as my writing is one of the most depressing styles I know. However, I'm glad that you do. :)

**Kawaii Koneko92:** RenxAnna. –pokes the pairing rather morosely- I'd like it more if I wasn't of the opinion that Yoh would have to die for it to happen.

**KimBob:** -cringes and shakes fist- Don't yell at me! –sulks- I'm working on it. HoroRen looks like a set of cute fluff at the moment.

**Squirrel Fraulein:** Yick, butter. It shall make me fat. –wrinkles nose- Er—does burning the squirrel count?

**Ren F and Spirit of Darkness:** Whee, a Chocolove-pairing request! –flies and glomps- Not sure how I shall work it out, but I'll think of something. And yes, RenxTamao too; rather earlier than the Chocolove-pairing. -.-; -loves Ren a wee bit too much to be healthy-

**Giftoftheelves:** HoroRen is a bit far back on my list at the moment, considering how easy it is, but if I get an inspiration, it shall be moved up. :D Watch for it!

**Inulover4eva:** Wah. –deflatesscowlsgoes off to buy a pump- And thank you. :D I rather liked the opening last line of Vignette I, myself. Which is possibly why I used it for the title. (-meanwhile, is inflating mightily-)

**PrismaticMage:** Buh- buh- Marco- mine-… Wahhhhhhh. –wails- And thank you! From an experienced MarcoLys writer, I appreciate the compliment.

And your Lyserg-obsession is plain, considering you ask to be called that on your profile. :) However, as I am a Hao-fangirl myself, I see no problems with your hobby so long as you don't, in your zeal for Lyserg, attempt to kill mine. ;) Don't worry about overloading me; this was made mostly as a writer's block aid, and the more prompts I have, the better.

sneaks a HaoxLyserg onto her list as well, on the pretense that you requested it- :P What DO you think of that pairing, just out of curiosity?


	8. Drabble Eight: RenxNichrome

**Every Pairing Under the Sun**

**Author's Note**: Waha – I wrote this about a day after I finished the RenxAnna piece, as I got bored of working on my other projects. Not too fond of this one, as Nichrome reminds me awfully of Hao. (Wah! I cannot write canon properly!)

This is like… Ren week. All of my next pairings appear to involve Ren. And after that is Hao week… again.

Seriously, people appear to be obsessed with Hao, Ren, and Yoh pairings. Or HaoxRenxYoh pairings. But they are awfully cute bishies… -snugs them-

_You're Mine_ Chapter Ten is having problems. –prods it- Mainly to do with the fact that I want to skip ahead; I'm already pre-writing a bonus chapter that ought to be, by all rights, posted in May. Unfortunately, my excitement over it is so total that I want to post it now. -.-

And I'm also working on 100 drabbles, all HaoxAnna. Great _Spirits_, I'm going to die... I can't go for that long being productive! I'll have... a cramp, or a seizure! Or, horror of horrors, my mind might actually grow!

..Erm. Enough rambling on my part. Enjoy the fic. :)

**List**: (AnnaTamao? Inserted either here or somewhere else) RenxTamao, Ren x Lyserg, RenxChocolove, LysergxTamao, KororoxManta, HaoxSquirrel, HaoxLyserg, HaoxAmidamaru (YohxSpirit of Fire bonus. :P), HaoxManta, Yoh x Lyserg, ChocolovexPirika (still liable to be moved), YohxRen, YohxOC, HorohoroxManta, YohxHoro, HoroxRen, HaoxAnna, YohxTamao, YohxAnna.

**Disclaimer:** If I owned Shaman King, the following scene would have most probably been in canon. Which would have sorely depressed all the fangirls who are convinced that Ren is straight, I'm sure.

* * *

Drabble Eight: Regret, and What Comes After

His kisses were rough, clumsy – deliberately so, with a careful calculation behind each movement that made him shiver instinctively.

The sandy-haired boy smiled at him, sleepy eyes cuttingly alert. Brushing his fingers over the light bone structure of his companion in a possessive caress, he whispered, "Hold still," and pressed against him gently, though there was no gentleness in the sharpness of his smile.

Golden eyes crashed shut as the other boy left off his ministrations and bent his attentions lower, tracing with lips and tongue the line of the violet-haired shaman's jaw, the taut muscle beneath the skin that twisted and writhed beneath his touch.

The younger hesitated only a moment as he traced his path across familiar territory, pausing as his lips grazed the Chinese shaman's throat.

"You're not enjoying this at all, are you?" The Patch officiant asked softly, and Ren felt the boy's lips curl.

"What do you _think_." The words dropped flatly from his tongue. He glanced away, and hardly even acknowledged it as tiny ivory teeth bit into his shoulder, marking him with crimson and white.

Nichrome smiled.

"Good." He said briefly, and continued, trailing his lips in a deceptively careless gesture across his shoulder, tongue flickering out from between his lips occasionally to trace delicate, shining lines that marked out the wiry muscles that he had already acquired.

Ren watched him impassively. Whatever emotions – pleasure, pain – he might have felt were hidden behind an opaque swirl of gold. "You look like a lizard when you do that." He said, with cool scorn.

"And you take it like a girl." Nichrome retorted equably from between his ministrations. The shaman felt him chuckle, a soft outburst of breath that swept across his skin and evoked another shiver.

"Who'd have thought." The boy mused as Ren staved off his reaction. "That you would fall prey to regret and apologies and would give yourself over to me."

From between gritted teeth, he ground out, "I should have just let you kill me."

"Oh, but I would have never let you." He was still smiling, and his teeth were sharp as he made another tiny splotch of crimson against the diluted gold of the Chinese boy's skin. "This way," he added, "is so much more fun. You _suffer_."

Turning his head away to expose his throat, Ren wondered, a little bleakly, if Nichrome would have been reduced to this if he had left Chrom alive.

_He still remembered the corpse_…

That laughing, personable young man who had smiled at him genuinely, though with the businesslike inflection that all officiants possessed. He thought still that sometimes he could see Chrom's expression – that curious twist of shock and… pity? – as he lanced the finishing blow against his judge. There had been no smiles, towards the end; only a determination to exist and to go on existing. And he had been pleased with himself, seeing the blood drain away into the soil.

_There was no pleasure now._

Biting down sharply, Nichrome watched as consciousness drained into Ren's eyes once more.

"That's right." He whispered approvingly, though there was contempt in the way that he said it, too. "You don't get off so easily. Stay awake. I want you to remember _every_thing. I want," he continued, and his hands were moving in place of his mouth now, dipping and twisting in elegant movements that made it all the more difficult for him not to cry out. "for you to keep these to your heart for the rest of your life. If you ever find someone who will take you for who you are, you'll never have them, because you will always be filled with these moments, so full and filthy that you won't be able to bear the thought of dirtying others with your grime."

Ren laughed, a gritty sound. "Do you think me some sort of sentimental idiot?" He whispered. "I do not regret things. Anything."

And Nichrome smiled too. "But you do." He said.

"You do."

(666 words)

* * *

**Author's Note**: This came of a train of thought; if Ren, in his regret and guilt, had offered himself over to Nichrome to do whatever he liked with. To kill. To injure. If Nichrome had been more vicious than Ren had thought. If he had wanted to _ruin_ Ren's life, and then leave him to live it out, knowing that it would never get any better.

There was going to be an extra scene (and in fact, I think I still have it saved around here somewhere) where this was merely a flashback, and years later, eighteen-year-old Ren is going out with HoroHoro. Old Blue-Hair tries to kiss him, and Ren ducks away, because he'll never be clean enough to touch HoroHoro the way that he wants to; unhaunted by the memories of Nichrome.

However, I realized that this scene was exactly 666 words (ahar! The devil's number!), and I decided to leave it this way, because there seemed an appropriateness (to me, at least) in where I stopped.

I know; it's a little shorter than usual. Hope you enjoyed it nevertheless. :)

Review Replies:

**Kawaii Koneko92: **No; at least for the moment, I have tired of my AU Yoh's, and the canon Yoh would never dream of being paired with anyone else. Anna is Anna, and Yoh is Yoh, and they fit together naturally, except for the tiny fissure that is Hao that can and does worm between them. (That, to me, is canon romance.) It's only a feeling of this second, this minute, this hour, but it's a feeling nevertheless. Although thank you, all the same, for the compliment. :)

**SquirrelFraulein:** I've never been good at writing illogical things. Douglas Adams (have you read him? You'd like him, I think) writes illogical humor, but that is Douglas-Adams-styled, and I cannot mimic it. So… that is my roundabout way of saying, No alien drivers today. ;)

Squirrel, though.

**PrismaticMage:** I've glimpsed it a few times here and there; Misai, I believe, has one or two chapters out on a RenxAnna fic, although I haven't brought myself to read it yet, life's been that busy. And – are you certain? I was quite sure that I mucked up Manta; I understand him only superficially, and I can't really grasp at what he _thinks_ and pretend that I know what I'm doing.

Well, as far as I know, you're the most experienced MarcoLys fanfic-author on Though if you aren't, forgive my ignorance; I've yet to really get into the older section of Shaman King fanfiction.

Yes, you should post that HaoLys drabble. It would be a nice change from my constant rote of dark romances. Half of these pairings – have you noticed? – the characters have to be forced and/or blackmailed into liking each other.

Alas, I am not good at creating happier circumstances with which to shove them together. –guilt- Though it has its fun.

**Nekoian:** I'm glad that you feel better. :) And thank you! Allow my opinion to differ, however, for as I have dedicated more time (I think) to the craft of it, I see the flaws that much more. And Ren is Chinese – as such, I feel a natural obligation to support him, pointy hair and all.

Although that does not hold me against happily sound-mutilating the nasal English voice who plays him in the dub.

**Inulover4eva:** I feel honoured that you think I made Yoh's death come off right, even with the fact that it was played off-screen. ;) No, I know what you mean; I'm joking.

Hao in this version is _scary_. No one to take him down a peg or two, he has the world in the palm of his hand. And believe me, that world is trembling.

carefully patches up holes, inserts self in chainmail, and inflates again-

**Emic192:** I know! Why keep Yoh (who has marijuana leaves on his bedspread) as he is, and then give Hao (whose name _means_ king) the name 'Zeke'? And you know fangirls; they never consider the risks.

**neoKOS-MOS:** Thank you. :) And your AnnaTamao proposal has intrigued me; it may or may not come next. I know it'll be rather soon, as I have a peculiar inspiration for it floating around within the depths of my theoretical brain.

**Sai:** -considers this-

…

Nah. Tamao's too red to be a watermelon. Strawberry, perhaps. And although the pairing's a bit… soft for my taste, I'll give it a try.


	9. Drabble Nine: TamaoxAnna

_Author's Note_**: I do not own Shaman King.** That being said, this was one of the strangest fics I've ever worked out? Enjoy. :)

**Pairings still to be done**: Ryu x Jun, Ryu x Tamao, Ren x Lyserg, RenxChocolove, Ren x Pirika, Ren x Bason, RenxTamao, Jeanne x Tamao, LysergxTamao, KororoxManta, Anna x Manta, Anna x Chocolove, Anna x Amidamaru, Faust x Anna, Hao x Nichrome, HaoxSquirrel, HaoxLyserg, HaoxAmidamaru (YohxSpirit of Fire), HaoxManta, Yoh x Lyserg, Bason x Amidamaru, ChocolovexPirika, (Haox)YohxRen, YohxOC, HorohoroxManta, Horo x Macchi, YohxHoro, HoroxRen, HaoxAnna, YohxTamao, YohxAnna.

Beautiful

_Between dawn and dusk they are broken to pieces; unnoticed, they perish forever._

Tamao lies through dawn and dusk alike, noticing that the sun has dropped into slumber only because Yoh shines brighter then, the careful points of his face wry and light. She slips between their fingers, her soul like sand, dusty and soft so that she fades away into the shadows. (A granule of sand, she is a granule of sand, and in the scattered stars she is shattered and gone.)

They are older now (or has he always been so gawky clumsy beautiful?) and go walking in the grounds often. She follows them rarely, only when the sun beats heavy down on the trees so that they sweat shadows in which she can hide.

He goes walking past and never sees her. Anna catches her eyes and watches.

-

"Yoh is mine."

Startled (bird), she glances up. Anna's eyes are like stone, like diamond, something hard that she might break herself upon, over and over again until she is the dust of stars upon which Yoh might wish.

"I-I know." The acknowledgement is a murmur and the murmur is bile on her tongue as she thinks of his stricken, horrified looks and the soft, silk-struck grin that touches his features when he thinks that she (Anna) does not see.

_The world holds balance._ Mikihisa had told her once, on his rare stops in the place where his father-in-law dwells._ When it does not, when a single whit is disturbed, the result is anarchy and darkness and chaos._

She thinks of what Anna has ever done to deserve that sweet, waiting love that would linger in the rain until he can see the path back to her. And Tamao thinks of chaos.

Anna walks away, seeing the spark of fire like Hao's in the soft eyes of a girl that she would have never hesitated in crushing. (There is hesitation now. She does not think, steps over it. She is fevered, it is morning, there are a million excuses and she dismisses them and goes off to shout at Yoh for not exercising hard enough.)

-

She begins to watch her as Yoh does, seeing the small, million graces in the every day movements; the crook of her arm, the tilt of her skull. Between dawn and dusk Anna never changes; a rigid, splintered statue that stands everywhere, watching and waiting. Her eyes are haunted by ghosts, but then that is not special; they are the shaman, the children that will heal the world, and the ghosts with the bones of the lost are part of what they must listen to.

(Tamao is best of all of them at this; she knows the feeling of shadows in the enveloping dark and the sweep that pushes them away and bids them stay. She knows how to bring them back from the raw, jagged edges, into safe things where they may linger and laugh.)

Yoh does not seem to see that brokenness; he stands on it, he leans against it, and he waits for her to push him before he is willing to go. She wonders at her strength, her patience, that unbreaking, unflinching tautness that never fails her. (Monotone and dead, crisp and clean and forgotten.)

Between dawn and dusk Anna smiles, scowls, threatens, sighs, without ever changing expression. And Tamao, who has never understood the other definition of the little death, wonders at how Anna is fading by inches as Yoh wears her away into weakness.

(Someday she will break, thinks Tamao, and then Yoh will crash and fade. Her heart throbs painfully at this, but it is the hard truth that if Yoh leaned on her, he would pass through; she is the fragile ghost that has always haunted him like a memory and a dream, and has forgotten how to solidify.)

She does not notice when Anna becomes her standard for beauty, only wonders (a little vaguely) why she has never seen before, the hard, sharp loveliness of eyes like splintered shadows and the thin mouth that can offer nothing like a smile for the girl who is nothing but a fan.

-

For Yoh's birthday, Tamao wants to draw him something beautiful. She begins with flowers, sweetpeas in the garden and lilies in the yard that fade into each other in one smooth swathe and wilt away.

She goes on with the jagged, glinting edge of a knife, the wispy trails of a ghost in the air, and the paintings of the moments that flow between twilight and evening.

One morning, she wakes sobbing from a dream of black eyes, shattered on the floor, and realizes:

_Anna_.

-

"Not like _that_," the _itako_ said irritably. She had been trying to school Tamao into doing it properly for hours, it seemed, and there were things other than this to be done; things that were not being done as she waited. "Like _this_." And without further ado, she slid her fingers to grasp Tamao's own brittle-slender digits and draw the few, hard strokes that the picture had needed. The warmth of her body swept over that of the young fortuneteller's and overwhelmed it as she bent close to guide her fingers, her breasts heavy and soft as they brushed against the girl's back.

Tamao shivered, turned her head back, and accidentally met Anna's coming as the _itako_ drew close to correct her.

There was silence, soft as the dawn, heavy as nightfall over the world. Anna's lips were silent as they drew Tamao's mouth, the shivering arc of her bones with the familiarity of instinct. She didn't understand why she was doing this, and perhaps that was as good a reason as any to do it.

"I-I'm sorry," Tamao began, timidly, starting into a blush, "I—Anna—"

_She meets Tamao's eyes coming. And though she doesn't smile, there is something like calm in the distant storm of dusk as she touches her lips gently and nods._

-

"You got her perfectly." The shaman beamed, his smile prideful and pleased. "How do you know Anna so well?"

Tamao flushed – he would never guess. At least, her hopes were that he wouldn't.

(Between dawn and dusk, there is the sun.

They are older now, and go walking in the woods. Occasionally they pass by strangers; Tamao never sees them.)

(end)

**Note**: Wow, first update in a long time. –guilt- However, I recently updated You're Mine anyway; go read, as I am being productive, so you should take advantage of it while it lasts! (And go read You're Mine and reassure me that I'm not seeing phantom hits by telling me you were there. :P)

Also, I realize it was a little abrupt. Call it laziness catching up?

Review Replies:

**The Summer Stars:** My apologies; I'm picking up my own laptop in March, so I feel your pain. D: Sorry it's late; your Ryuquests (bwah, fear the puns) shall be forthcoming. And you are not crazy! You are the standard by which I judge my sanity. (I am, in case you are wondering, very, very sane.)

**Nekoian: **-laughs- I don't mind long reviews; I actually enjoy them, sadist that I am. And Tokageroh has NEVER had his own pairing. Admittedly he is green, but this is still very depressing! We must find him the perfect mate!

**love-chibis:** Hey, thanks. :) Just remember that when it comes to minor characters, Chocolove is so completely mine.

**Emic192:** Quite welcome. :)

**Black Hikari:** What, really? There's like this whole angst-niche in that pairing! It's practically an angst-valley! Why hasn't anyone excavated it yet? And I've tacked on Hao to the YohxRen pairing, although I'm not sure how I'll pull that off…

**Inulover4eva:** Poor Ren. –hugs him- -is stabbed through heart by hair-

**Ren F and Spirit of Darkness:** Really, what IS it with everyone and ghostly love? I'll give it a try, provided you give me your Japanese art. ;)

**Sentai Squirrel:** You ought to. Him and Roger Zelazny, who is singularly the most brilliant person ever to give his character a sword.

**Deathlioness:** Of course. That, and Horo stabbing him through because he doesn't want Ren dating his ickle sister. –snicker-

**Bibliomaniac:** You are a small, evil Anna-fan, aren't you? I've added all the pairings and will give them tries, although I suspect the Anna x Hao is just self-indulgence; that one should be easy enough.

**Azalee: **Mm… I don't run across HaoxHoros very often. But Hao's got it all figured out; there was no reason to keep with Horo once his use was up. Dark angst coming at you soon. Ryu is full of it. xD

**Gladiel:** Neither do I, but Yoh is really a strong personality around which his group revolves, though he doesn't show it. It'd be like the sun going away.

**Blah:** Suggestion taken. :)

**Notnow:** Thank you. –grin-

**Faustine:** Hehehe?


End file.
